In Orlando, Fla., on Tuesday, voters returned Monique Worrell, a Democrat, to the prosecutor’s office by a wide margin.
The vote repudiated a decision by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, to suspend Ms. Worrell from office last year, when he accused her of allowing “violent offenders, drug traffickers, serious juvenile offenders, and pedophiles to evade incarceration.” It also reinforced the popularity of Ms. Worrell’s promises to reduce both crime and the number of people behind bars.
But in Tampa, Fla., Andrew Warren, another liberal prosecutor who had been removed from office by Governor DeSantis, lost his bid for re-election. He was defeated by the Republican who had been appointed to replace him. Mr. Warren had vowed not to prosecute those who seek or provide abortions.
The two races exemplified the mixed picture that has emerged since Donald J. Trump made crime a big theme of his campaign, seeking to tie murder and illicit drugs to migrants at the border. Many Republican candidates had criticized liberal policies that they said eroded public safety.
Law enforcement-related races across the country were overshadowed by the presidential contest and a wave of support for Republicans. But they were also highly contingent on local circumstances.
Prosecutors who supported policies aimed at rehabilitation and reducing racial disparities won new seats and fended off challengers. At the same time, voters in California, Arizona and Colorado rolled back some criminal justice reforms, toughened penalties and ousted liberal prosecutors in Los Angeles and Oakland, Calif.
Advocates for reducing mass incarceration cautioned against drawing any sweeping conclusion about voter sentiment on crime and public safety from the varied outcomes.
“This appears to be a highly idiosyncratic election that varied substantially by district, by state and by ballot initiative,” said Amy Fettig, the acting co-director of Fair and Just Prosecution, which supports progressive prosecutors around the country. “It would be wrong to say that the results speak to the pendulum swinging very far in either direction.”
In the wealthy suburbs of Detroit, where crime last year was at record lows, Prosecuting Attorney Karen McDonald cruised to re-election over her Republican opponent, who accused her of being “soft on crime.”
In Lake County, a suburban Chicago county that has gone from red to blue in recent years, the incumbent prosecutor, Eric Rinehart, comfortably beat a tough-on-crime Republican challenger. Mr. Rinehart is a supporter of a slate of statewide reforms to policing, bail and prisons that took effect in 2021 and pointed out that crime in Lake County had been falling.
The winning candidate for district attorney in New York’s capital, Albany, voiced support for alternatives to incarceration, like treatment courts, while also talking about the importance of removing guns from the streets.
The candidate, Lee Kindlon, a criminal defense attorney, beat the incumbent, David Soares, in the Democratic primary this summer, but Mr. Soares ran as a write-in candidate in the general election this week. Mr. Soares has been a vocal critic of the Raise the Age law, which was designed to keep more juveniles out of adult prisons.
Shortly after winning the election, Mr. Kindlon told a local TV reporter that voters elected him “to put bad guys away and give second chances to people who need it.”
But in Houston, a Democratic stronghold, Sean Teare, a Democrat who supports reforms made to the money bail system, won his campaign for district attorney with less than 51 percent of the votes, a much narrower margin than expected.
“This victory is for everyone who believes in safer neighborhoods and a justice system that works for all,’’ Mr. Teare said in a statement on social media.
Still, some high-profile progressive prosecutors appeared headed to defeat after Tuesday’s election.
The liberal Los Angeles district attorney, George Gascón, is losing by about 20 percentage points to his Republican challenger, Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor who ran as an independent, according to the latest vote count.
“The voters of Los Angeles County have spoken and have said enough is enough of D.A. Gascon’s pro-criminal extreme policies,” Mr. Hochman said in a comment on social media.
Voters also appeared on their way to approving a recall of Pamela Price, who pledged to hold the police accountable for misconduct, in Alameda County, which includes Oakland. The effort mirrored the recall of Chesa Boudin, the liberal chief prosecutor in San Francisco, in 2022. Oakland has long struggled with crime rates that are higher than those in other California cities, and voters also appear to have approved a measure to recall the mayor, Sheng Tao.
California voters approved a ballot measure to increase penalties for theft and certain drug offenses, and rejected a measure that would have prohibited slavery or involuntary servitude as a penalty for crime, which the U.S. Constitution allows and which is the underlying rationale for forced prison labor. In Nevada, voters approved a similar measure banning slavery.
In Dallas, voters approved measures to decriminalize marijuana and to require the hiring of hundreds more police officers.
And in Arizona voters approved a number of tough-on-crime measures including one requiring a life sentence for child sex trafficking. Another approved measure will add a $20 fee to criminal convictions that will be allocated to a fund for emergency responders who are killed in the line of duty. A third measure will allow residents to seek property tax refunds if they incur expenses because local governments fail to enforce laws against panhandling, camping, loitering and other offenses associated with homelessness.
Back in Orlando, it is an open question whether Governor DeSantis will seek to remove Ms. Worrell from office for a second time. Throughout her campaign, she challenged the governor to name a specific case where someone who committed a crime had evaded jail time. In her victory speech, she said that $2.5 million had been spent in an attempt to turn voters against her.
“I want to thank the voters for standing with me and saying, ‘We don’t believe you, Ron DeSantis,’” she said.
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