The Left’s Funny New Lie: It’s The ‘Red States’ With More Crime!
Because Democrats know they’re completely untrustworthy when it comes to law enforcement, having turned virtually every major city into a rape and murder zone, they’ve made the obvious choice.
No, silly, they haven’t started arresting criminals. They’ve started lying.
It’s a lie told recently by Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and then repeated twice this week in The Washington Post. The latest came in a column by Dana Milbank. (Yes, someone actually named their son Dana Milbank.)
“Violent crime is generally worse in Republican-run states,” he wrote on Tuesday under the headline, “It’s just murder living in a red state.”
The source for that claim, the same one made by Newsom, is a report published earlier this year by the leftist outfit Third Way. The report observed that “murder rates are far higher in Trump-voting red states than Biden-voting blue states. And sometimes, murder rates are highest in cities with Republican mayors.”
To start, the point in correlating crime and Democrat policies has never been that “blue states” are violent hellholes. It was always that Democrat mayors and district attorneys are demonstrably anti-law enforcement, and more interested in racial “equity” than in prosecuting offenders. Again, that’s mayors and district attorneys, elected officials who serve on the city and county levels, not state. Of course, Republicans have tied every Democrat running for every office to the issue, but the exact line of attack was always in reference to county and city officials.
With that in mind, let’s look at the data compiled by Third Way. The report listed 10 states with the highest murder rates in the U.S. using data from 2020. “In fact, the top per capita murder rate states in 2020 were mostly those far from massive urban centers and Democratic mayors and governors,” the report said. “Eight of the top ten worst murder rate states voted for [Donald] Trump in 2020. None of those eight has supported a Democrat for president since 1996.” The authors of the report observed, “These red states are not generating ‘murder is out of control’ national headlines. They seem to generate no headlines at all.”
But for this to be a devastating blow to the Democrats-suck-on-crime narrative requires ignoring that in every state, including otherwise red ones, there are densely populated areas that tend to be blue. And it just so happens, more often than not, that’s where the surge in crime has taken place.
The No. 1 state on Third Way’s list is Mississippi. Sure enough, the statewide vote in the 2020 election was for Trump. But within the state, Hinds County residents voted for Joe Biden, 3 to 1. Mississippi’s biggest city, Jackson, is in Hinds County. You know where this is going.
Reporting on Jackson last year, CNN declared it “one of the deadliest U.S. cities.”
The mayor of Jackson is Chokwe Antar Lumumba, a Democrat. The district attorney is Jody Owens, a Democrat.
No. 2 on the list is Louisiana. Trump won that state, too. But on the more local level, he lost Orleans, the parish that contains New Orleans, the state’s most populous city. Residents there went for Biden almost 8 to 1.
“New Orleans had the highest homicide rate of any major city so far this year, with about 41 homicides per 100,000 residents.”— The Wall Street Journal, Sep. 16, 2022
The mayor of New Orleans is LaToya Cantrell, a Democrat. The district attorney is Jason Williams, also a Democrat.
No. 3 on the list is Kentucky, another red state that voted to elect Trump. But Kentucky’s biggest city Louisville is in Jefferson County and 60 percent of those voters supported Biden.
This is from Kentucky-based think tank Pegasus Institute in August: “In the last decade, the city of Louisville has seen unprecedented increases in shootings and homicides. 2020 became Louisville’s deadliest year on record, and 2021 have proven to continue that trend.” The organization reported last year that Louisville’s homicide rate was competing with the likes of Chicago and Philadelphia.
The mayor of Louisville is Greg Fischer, a Democrat. The district attorney is Thomas B. Wine. He is also a Democrat.
Next is Alabama at No. 4, another 2020 red state. But Biden won the most votes in the most populous county, also called Jefferson. He won 56 percent to Trump’s 43. Within Jefferson is the city of Birmingham, which has the third-highest murder rate in all of the U.S.
The mayor of Birmingham is Randall Woodfin. He’s a Democrat, just like the district attorney, Danny Carr.
In slot No. 5 is Missouri. Again, a Trump state. And again, with the county containing its biggest city, St. Louis, going for Biden, 61 percent to Trump’s 37. St. Louis has the fourth-highest murder rate in the country.
Mayor: Tishaura Jones, Democrat.
County prosecuting attorney: Wesley Bell, same.
No. 6 is South Carolina. Trump won that state, but Charleston County, with the city of North Charleston, went for Biden with 56 percent of the vote. North Charleston has the highest murder rate in the state.
Finally, here we have a city with a mayor, Keith Summey, from the Republican Party. The county solicitor — Charleston does not have a district attorney — is Scarlett Wilson, also a Republican.
Not that we’re keeping score, but that brings the number on this list of Republicans who might feasibly be held accountable for raging crime in their cities to a grand total of two. For Democrats, it’s so far 10.
The next two states on Third Way’s report, New Mexico and Georgia, went blue in 2020, so we’ll skip those.
No. 9 is Arkansas, which was red. But again, Pulaski County, with the state’s biggest city of Little Rock, went blue with 60 percent of voters choosing Biden. That city reportedly has one of the highest violent crime rates in the state. The mayor of Little Rock is Frank Scott, a Democrat. The county prosecutor, Larry Jegley, is a Democrat as well.
Lastly, at No. 10, is Tennessee. Another red state with a major blue county that went for Biden. That county here would be Shelby, with 64 percent of the vote going to the president. In Shelby is the city of Memphis, which, according to The New York Times, “is often ranked among the nation’s most violent cities.”
The mayor of Memphis is Jim Strickland, a Democrat. Steve Mulroy, a Democrat, is the recently-elected district attorney.
To recap, of the eight red states listed in Third Way’s report as being among the top 10 with the highest murder rate, the cities where all that murder is happening are run almost exclusively by Democrats. All but one had a Democrat mayor. And all but one had a Democrat responsible for pursuing criminal prosecutions.
Democrats know they’re terrible on law enforcement. Attempting to lie about it only makes the governments they run that more dangerous.
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