This year’s Los Angeles District Attorney race is pitting incumbent George Gascón, widely viewed as a progressive criminal justice reformer, against former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman, who is running on a more traditional approach to prosecuting cases.
While both candidates have cited different statistics to make their case as to whether L.A. County is safer today or not, it’s voters, arguably, who will make that determination. Many view this race as a referendum on the current state of public safety in the nation’s largest county – and whether voters feel more or less safe than before Gascón took office nearly four years ago.
By now, voters in L.A. County have received their mail-in ballots for the Nov. 5 general election. For those still deciding which candidate to vote for, here’s an overview of who the candidates are, the issues driving this election and other information about this race.
The candidates
Gascón was 13 when he and his family fled from Havana, Cuba, and arrived in the United States in 1967.
Now 70, Gascón is seeking a second term as district attorney for L.A. County – a position he was first elected to in 2020 when, buoyed by a progressive voter base that was hungry for criminal justice reforms following the death of George Floyd that year, he defeated then-incumbent Jackie Lacey.
Gascón’s career in law enforcement spans more than four decades.
He spent about 28 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, first as a patrol officer, then working his way up to assistant chief of police, a position he held from 2002 to 2006. After he left the LAPD, Gascón served as police chief in Mesa, Ariz. for three years.
In 2009, he was appointed chief of police in San Francisco. Two years later, he was tapped to serve as San Francisco’s district attorney, a role he held from 2011 to 2019.
His opponent in this election, meanwhile, touts his 34 years as a prosecutor.
Hochman, 60, was born and raised in Los Angeles. From 1990 to 1997, he served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California where he prosecuted over 100 cases, including cases involving gang members, drug traffickers and corrupt public officials. He also ran the environmental crimes section of his office, going after air, water and land polluters.
Hochman later served as an assistant attorney general overseeing the U.S. Department of Justice’s tax division from 2007 to 2009.
He later served five years on the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, which enforces the city’s ethics laws and doles out punishments to city officials and others who violate these laws. He was president of the commission from 2015 to 2016.
Hochman currently works for a private law firm where he specializes in criminal defense, tax litigation and complex business litigation.
Approach to law enforcement
The state of public safety in L.A. County is on the ballot this November. At least that’s how many view the race between Gascón and Hochman.
Gascón was elected as L.A.’s district attorney in 2020 based on a progressive criminal justice reform agenda. His campaign has highlighted his role in exonerating 14 innocent people who were wrongfully convicted, some when they were children.
And according to his campaign, his office has filed five officer-involved shooting cases and 10 excessive force cases against law enforcement officers. His campaign said that’s a stark difference to the single officer-involved shooting case the D.A.’s office filed in the two decades before Gascón took office.
“My top priorities are protecting community safety, bringing accountability to Los Angeles’ criminal legal system, and improving victims’ services through trauma-informed approaches and community partnerships,” Gascón said in a recent questionnaire he completed for the Los Angeles Daily News.
But Hochman, running on a tougher-on-crime platform, says Gascón is too lenient on criminals and that crime has worsened as a result. He’s accused Gascón of not seeking gun sentencing enhancements often enough, nor gang enhancements. The enhancements add additional jail time to a person’s sentence if they’re convicted of a crime.
“We have given you, Mr. Gascón, almost four years to run your social experiment with our safety, and you have failed,” Hochman said during a Sept. 11 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, in that debate, countered that his administration has “evolved” since he first headed up the D.A.’s office in Los Angeles and that his office seeks “balanced reform” that ensures there are “appropriate consequences for criminal behavior.” He said there’s now a committee to review cases when prosecutors feel the office should seek sentencing enhancements or to consider prosecuting a minor as an adult.
Gascón has also said his office has been “very aggressive” in tackling hate crimes, human trafficking and waste theft.
In his response to the Daily News’ questionnaire, Gascón said his office’s filing rate for violent felonies like homicide and rape is “on par with the office’s average for the decade before I took office.” He said his office’s filing rate for hate crimes is the highest in California and that it files more than 4,000 gun enhancements on average per year. (In 2020, the last year then-District Attorney Jackie Lacey was in office, the D.A.’s office filed 8,845 gun enhancements.)
“Where there have been changes are on nonviolent misdemeanors — such as driving on a suspended license without the presence of drugs, alcohol or reckless driving; cases like that are better handled in traffic court, allowing us to keep our courts and jails with the capacity to handle more serious crime,” Gascón wrote.
Gascón has said that 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 days of mass incarceration, seeking the death penalty, sending hundreds of kids to adult prison,” Gascón said during the Sept. 11 debate. “Those are the things that we’re avoiding, and we show that our work is having an impact.”
Gascón has accused Hochman of favoring mass incarceration – a claim Hochman denies. Hochman said he’s neither for mass incarceration nor what he calls “Gascón’s de-carceration” policy.
Hochman said he would adopt a “hard middle” approach in which every case would be considered individually, based on a defendant’s criminal history, the crime or crimes committed and the impact on any victims.
“I want to restore safety and security in L.A. County, restore the people’s trust in the D.A.’s office to get the job done, and bring back a successful and productive partnership between the D.A.’s office and law enforcement,” Hochman wrote in his response to the Daily News’ questionnaire.
Is crime up or down?
In recent debates, Gascón has cited LAPD statistics showing that homicides are down in the city of L.A. He said that year-to-date statistics from the LAPD show that crimes against people and property have decreased.
He’s acknowledged the problems with retail and auto thefts and said his office is dealing with them, prosecuting many organized retail theft cases and participating in task forces focused on the problem.
Hochman has pushed back on Gascón’s reliance on LAPD statistics. LAPD statistics only show crime trends in the city of Los Angeles, while data from the California Department of Justice show crime trends for all 88 cities in L.A. County.
The countywide data show that between 2020 and 2023, violent crime, property crimes and hate crimes increased by double digits — and shoplifting skyrocketed 133% countywide, he said.
Party affiliations
Both candidates have at one point or another been registered as Republican, though Gascón now identifies as a Democrat while Hochman switched to “no party preference” last year.
Still, both candidates have criticized their opponent’s prior association with the GOP.
Gascón has repeatedly sought to tie Hochman to former President Donald Trump, accusing his opponent of being a “fearmonger” who tells “half truths and … lies.”
Hochman ran for state attorney general as a Republican in 2022. He said he’s running now as an independent because the D.A. is a nonpartisan office and the work of the D.A. should not be political.
Hochman said he was a Democrat for 20 years before becoming a “centrist Republican.”
Ironically, he said during another debate last month, “what (Gascón) isn’t telling people … is that he’s been Republican in his life almost twice as long as I have.”
Gascón said after that debate that he “increasingly became very uncomfortable” with the direction the Republican party was taking the country and switched to being a Democrat about 14 years ago.
Gascón then countered that Hochman was a Republican much more recently than him.
“He ran as a Republican for (state) attorney general (in 2022) – after Trump ran in 2016, after Jan. 6 when people tried to overthrow democracy, after the Supreme Court (overturned) Roe v. Wade. He continued to run as a Republican,” Gascón said.
Hochman said his opponent is trying to paint him as a conservative Republican when Hochman considers himself a centrist who is pro-choice and supports LGBTQ+ rights.
Hochman said he did not vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020 and plans to vote for Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, in November.
Endorsements
Gascón is endorsed by the L.A. County Democratic Party, the powerful L.A. County Federation of Labor which represents more than 300 union and labor organizations, and progressive groups like L.A. Forward and LA Progressive.
Local elected officials who back him include L.A. County Supervisors Lindsey Horvath, Holly Mitchell and Hilda Solis; L.A. City Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Hugo Soto-Martínez and Imelda Padilla; and L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia.
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 lost to Gascón in 2020; L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger; L.A. City Councilmembers John Lee and Traci Park; and former L.A. mayoral candidate and businessman Rick Caruso, who once served as president of the L.A. Police Commission.
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