To put the best face on the Dist. Lawyer. After George Gascón's poor performance in Tuesday's elections, he is where he wanted and expected to be. Ballots are still being counted, but results from the first day show him with just over 20% of the vote and he is headed for a November showdown with former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman.
Hochman was soundly defeated for state attorney general two years ago when he challenged incumbent Rob Bonta. In that partisan race, Hochman ran as a Republican. He is now an independent, but even former Republican candidates in nonpartisan races have an uphill battle in liberal Los Angeles County. In November, many of the younger, more progressive voters who did not go to the polls this week are, history suggests, more likely to do so.
But Gascón should also know that re-election will not be an easy road, even if he is a Democrat, as his campaign materials point out.
The primary results illustrate that Los Angeles voters are deeply concerned about crime, even though violent crime has dropped dramatically after a nationwide surge during the pandemic. Property crimes receive a lot of attention, but have actually remained stable in recent years, with the worrying exception of shoplifting and theft of personal property in publicly accessible places, such as packages off porches.
Since the day Gascón took office, he has been hit by a relentless campaign against his progressive reforms, leading to two unsuccessful but distracting recall campaigns and numerous lawsuits against him by the union representing prosecutors.
Gascón should pay attention to the obvious parallels with Sheriff Alex Villanueva's defeat in 2022. Villanueva came in first in his primary, but with only 30% of the vote, a very poor result for an incumbent. Robert Luna crushed him in the second round. Gascón also came first, but with an even lower percentage.
To avoid following in Villanueva's footsteps, Gascón needs to do a better job of articulating his progress to make his office better reflect what Los Angeles voters wanted when they first elected him: a more fair and equitable criminal justice system. He needs to better communicate what he has done to ensure that criminal sentencing and other policies protect public safety and reduce recidivism. He must explain to voters that the evidence supports more enlightened pretrial policies, such as eliminating money bail, not charging juveniles as adults and focusing office resources on the most serious crimes.
His campaign needs to debunk the numerous falsehoods spread by law enforcement and media commentators about how one policy or another supposedly led to specific crimes. You have to compare Los Angeles' statistics with similar or often worse figures from cities across the country represented by more traditional prosecutors.
And he has to stand firm against his critics in the deputy prosecutors' union, which has questioned most of his reforms.
Four current members and three former members of the union ran against him in Tuesday's race. If any of them really hoped to defeat him, he failed miserably by splitting the vote between them, helping Hochman secure second place.
If, on the other hand, all they wanted was to generate enough anti-Gascón sentiment to prevent the incumbent from winning outright, they were a resounding success.
And in Hochman the union will have some kind of representative in November. Hochman is a member of the union's legal team in its lawsuit to block Gascón's directive against seeking long sentences under the three-strike law. The union prevailed in the Court of Appeals. Arguments are expected to take place in the state Supreme Court later this year.
But Gascón is better positioned against him than against Jeffrey Chemerinsky, a former federal prosecutor who won support from Democratic clubs and officials, including Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto. He presented himself as a more moderate reformer, but appears to be falling far behind the pack.
The end of the progressive prosecutor movement has been wrongly predicted many times, for example with the recall of the San Francisco District in 2022. Attorney. Chesa Boudin. But it continues to advance, despite measures taken by more conservative state legislatures and governors to interfere with voters' decisions.
In Texas, for example, José Garza, current district attorney for Travis County, where Austin is located, handily defeated a challenge on Tuesday. In Houston-dominated Harris County, voters defeated District Attorney Kim Ogg, who disappointed his longtime supporters by reversing his progressive policies.
But it's only March. Garza will likely have an easy race against the Republican nominee in November, but Sean Teare, who defeated Ogg in the Democratic primary, will have his hands full in the general election against the Republican nominee.
Gascón will also have to work hard if he wants to defend himself against Hochman. He may be comforted and wary at the same time by the recent example of Villanueva, one of his sharpest critics. The former sheriff appears to have been defeated once again, this time in his challenge to County Supervisor Janice Hahn. Gascón should point out that he is, in politics and temperament, the anti-Villanueva, not the next Villanueva.
