Election 2024: Candidates for LA County district attorney will debate on Sunday

The race to serve as the Los Angeles District Attorney for the next four years is heating up between incumbent George Gascón and Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor and U.S. Assistant Attorney General.

Gascón, who previously served as the district attorney in San Francisco and, before that, was an officer then an assistant chief in the Los Angeles Police Department, was elected L.A. District Attorney in 2020, buoyed by a base of progressive voters seeking major criminal justice reforms following the death of George Floyd that year.

Gascón has framed his bid for reelection as a campaign to continue implementing “balanced reform” measures that combat violence in the community while rejecting policies of mass incarceration.

His opponent in the race, however, says public safety in L.A. County has gotten worse under Gascón’s leadership.

Hochman is campaigning on a tougher-on-crime platform that calls for restoring the D.A.’s Office – the largest local prosecutorial office in the nation – to something closer to what it resembled before Gascón took office.

Now the general counsel at a law firm where he specializes in criminal defense, tax litigation and complex business litigation, Hochman says he is neither for total mass incarceration nor what he referred to as “Gascón’s de-incarceration” policy, which he thinks is too soft on crime.

Instead, Hochman, who once served as president of the L.A. City Ethics Commission, is pushing for what he calls the “hard middle.” If elected D.A., he said, every case would be considered individually, based on a defendant’s criminal history, the crime or crimes committed and the impact on the victim or victims.

The two candidates are set to debate again on Sunday, Sept. 29.

The forum will broadcast live on KABC Channel 7, starting at 6 p.m. The event is co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Greater Los Angeles and the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles County and in partnership with Univision Los Angeles.

Round 1

Gascón and Hochman previously went head-to-head during a Sept. 11 candidates forum hosted by Jewish Federation Los Angeles and moderated by Spectrum News 1’s Alex Cohen. Throughout that forum, Hochman criticized the incumbent as being too lenient with criminals while Gascón sought to associate his opponent with former President Donald Trump.

Hochman repeatedly criticized Gascón’s policies as soft. He accused Gascón of oftentimes not seeking gun sentencing enhancements, nor gang enhancements, that would add additional jail time if someone is convicted of a crime.

Lax policies like those have made criminals less afraid to commit crimes, Hochman said.

“We have given you, Mr. Gascón, almost four years to run your social experiment with our safety, and you have failed,” Hochman said during that debate. “People and businesses live in fear, justifiably so, of having their home or car or stores robbed. … The only group that does not live in fear are criminals.”

Gascón, meanwhile, said his administration has “evolved” over time with “balanced reform” that ensures there are “appropriate consequences for criminal behavior.”

He said he started a committee to review cases where prosecutors feel the office should seek sentencing enhancements or to consider prosecuting a minor as an adult. He also said his office recently sought a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for someone involved in a murder case.

At the same time, Gascón said, people want the criminal justice system to be fair, and his office is careful to avoid wrongful convictions.

”We don’t want to go back to the past. We don’t want to go back to the days of mass incarceration, seeking the death penalty, sending hundreds of kids to adult prison,” Gascón said. “Those are the things that we’re avoiding, and we show that our work is having an impact.”

Gascón’s campaign later provided figures showing that the D.A.’s Office filed between 4,065 and 4,405 gun enhancements during each of his first three years on the job and that the office filed 2,331 gun enhancements during the first six months of this year.

In 2020, under then-District Attorney Jackie Lacey, the D.A.’s Office filed 8,845 gun enhancements.

As for Gascón’s decision to not seek extended jail time for suspected gang members, Jamarah Hayner, a political consultant for Gascón’s campaign, said in an email this week that gang enhancements aren’t effective at reducing gang violence and often are used in discriminatory ways. For these reasons, she said, the state legislature has started to limit the use of gang enhancements.

“We have seen over the decades how gang enhancements are a major contributor to mass incarceration, but do nothing to improve public safety,” Hayner said in the email. “Without the use of gang enhancements, the city of L.A. saw a 26% decrease in gang-related homicides in 2022 and 33% decrease in gang-related homicides in 2021. We need an objective system, not an oppressive system.”

But during the Sept. 11 debate, Hochman went after Gascón’s policies relentlessly, saying they’re “so pro-criminal and ineffective” that about 98% of prosecutors in the D.A.’s Office supported a failed recall attempt against Gascón in 2022 while 37 cities passed “no confidence” motions against him.

Hochman also took aim at Gascón for co-authoring Proposition 47, which California voters approved 10 years ago that reduced penalties for certain theft and drug offenses. Before Prop. 47, a shoplifter who stole $400 in merchandise could face felony charges. Under Prop. 47, retail theft generally isn’t considered a felony unless the amount of goods stolen is worth at least $950.

Some people now want parts of Prop. 47 rolled back. Proposition 36, which is on the Nov. 5 ballot, would amend the law so that people with at least two prior theft convictions could face felony charges even if they steal less than $950 in merchandise.

Prop. 36 would also let judges sentence drug dealers to state prison rather than county jail if convicted of trafficking hard drugs in large quantities or possessing a firearm while trafficking drugs. In addition, convicted drug dealers and manufacturers could face murder charges if they continued to traffic drugs and someone died.

For his part, Gascón said Prop. 47 helped address the disproportionate number of Blacks and Latinos who were being incarcerated – sometimes for possessing small amounts of drugs.

But Hochman said Gascón’s pursuit of lesser punishments didn’t just end with Prop. 47. Instead, Hochman said, Gascón opted as L.A.’s district attorney to not have the office prosecute many already downgraded cases as misdemeanors either.

Figures from Gascón’s campaign show that the rate of misdemeanor petty theft cases the D.A.’s Office filed generally hovered in the low- to mid-90% range between 2014 and 2019. In 2020, during Lacey’s last year as district attorney before Gascón took over, that rate fell to 87%.

In comparison, during Gascón’s first three years in office from 2021 through 2023, the filing rates ranged from 82% to 85% and was at 83% through the first half of this year.

Going on the offense, Gascón, a Democrat, sought to tie his opponent to former President Trump during the debate two weeks ago. He called Hochman a “Republican” and “fearmonger” and accused Hochman of telling “half truths and … lies.”

Although Hochman ran unsuccessfully as a Republican in the state attorney general race in 2022, he is running as an Independent in the current D.A. race.

In an interview this week, Hochman said he was a Democrat for 20 years before becoming a “centrist Republican.” He said he then switched to “no party preference” in 2023, noting that the D.A. race is nonpartisan.

“The D.A. (Office) is about keeping people safe and doing it in a smart and effective way and not about making criminal justice decisions based on personal politics,” Hochman said.

Both sides cite stats

When it came to assessing whether public safety in L.A. County has improved the last nearly four years under Gascón’s watch, both candidates cited different sources to make their case.

Gascón acknowledged that there have been problems with retail and auto thefts. But, he said, his office is dealing with those issues, having prosecuted many organized retail theft cases and having participated in task forces focused on this issue.

At the same time, Gascón pointed to statistics from the Los Angeles Police Department and said that year-to-date, crimes against people and property have decreased in the city of Los Angeles.

Hochman criticized Gascón during the Sept. 11 debate for “selectively” citing LAPD statistics that only show crime trends for the city of Los Angeles. Hochman then pointed to statistics from the California Department of Justice – which reflect crime trends for all 88 cities in L.A. County – and said that between 2020 and 2023, violent crimes, property crimes and hate crimes all increased by double digits and shoplifting went up 133% countywide.

Recent poll and endorsements

Gascón was the top vote getter in this race during the primary election – capturing 25.2% of the vote in March, out of a crowded field of 12 candidates. Hochman came in second with 15.9% of the vote.

In a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies/Los Angeles Times poll conducted between July 31 and Aug. 11, respondents were asked which of the two remaining candidates they’d vote for if the general election were held at the time of the polling. Forty-five percent of likely voters named Hochman while 20% said Gascón. Thirty-five percent were undecided.

With the Nov. 5 general election just over five weeks away, the two candidates are hoping to convince undecided voters they’re the best person for the D.A. job.

They’re hoping the endorsements they’ve picked up will help.

Gascón is endorsed by the L.A. County Democratic Party and the powerful L.A. County Federation of Labor, as well as progressive groups like L.A. Forward and LA Progressive.

Hochman is endorsed by the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, which represents deputy D.A.s in L.A. County, and a number of local police unions as well as the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs’ Association. He’s also endorsed by former L.A. County District Attorney Lacey, who ran for reelection but lost to Gascón in 2020.

Sunday’s debate will air live on ABC7 and will stream across the station’s digital platforms, on univision34.com and on the League of Women Voters of Greater Los Angeles’ YouTube channel.