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The Vera Institute of Justice and Dream.org are launching a new campaign to stop bipartisan legislation to crack down on organized retail crime and are wading into congressional races.
The liberal groups are launching the “Serious About Safety Majority” effort to stop “tough on crime” legislation, according to details first shared with Semafor, and are specifically going after the House-passed Combating Organized Retail Crime Act.
The groups plan to spend more than $500,000 on digital and streaming ads this year and hope to expand the effort.
Insha Rahman, who leads the institute, said it’s time to push back against lawmakers who “support bills that won’t prevent crime and break its cycle but only ratchet up incarceration.”
“The issue with CORCA is that it does not properly address the very real threat of retail crime, which we all agree is an issue, but empowers DHS and ICE, an issue Democrats have shut down the government over previously. This DHS department should not and cannot be trusted given their track record,” Rahman said.
The coalition wants Democrats to stop the retail crime bill in the Senate, where one senator can slow everything down. Reps. Summer Lee, D-Pa., and Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, are also involved in the effort.
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Democrats have repeatedly cleaved over crime legislation this Congress, most notably when Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., clashed on the Senate floor over police legislation last year. Cortez Masto is a co-sponsor of the retail crime legislation, which allows more criminal forfeitures and interstate prosecution of retail crime, while also enhancing money laundering crackdowns. It has more than 40 bipartisan co-sponsors in the Senate.
That legislation already easily passed the House, but activists were heartened that some Democratic co-sponsors like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla., peeled off to oppose the bill. Brown, who represents Cleveland, said: “It’s time to have an honest conversation about what strengthens our communities — not ‘tough talk’ and scare tactics but more federal dollars going to local crime prevention programs, which we know deliver real safety.”
There might be agreement on some of that: Democrats are increasingly devising bills that redirect funding from President Donald Trump’s priorities to local police and justice grants.