A guide to the L.A. District Attorney’s race next week

Nov. 5, also known as Election Day across the United States, is anticipated as the night Americans will vote in their next president. However, Angelenos will be focused on another big race: the Los Angeles District Attorney. 

D.A. George Gascón is facing a bid to unseat him by the law-and-order oriented Nathan Hochman, who has a commanding lead in the polls.

The contest calls to mind the 2022 election which brought down Chesa Boudin, Gascón’s successor as San Francisco D.A. In both cases, an incumbent who was voted into office during 2020’s groundswell of support for police reform is now facing an opposition which contends his policies have led to higher crime.

Who are these candidates? Read on for an explanation.

The Candidates

George Gascón was born in pre-revolutionary Cuba, and emigrated to the United States as a teenager. He joined the military, then became a police officer. As Chief of Police in Mesa, Arizona, Gascón rose to prominence for his conflicts with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio over the latter’s alleged racial profiling of Latinos. Gascón was a member of the Republican Party at that time.

In 2011, Gavin Newsom, then mayor of San Francisco, appointed Gascón as the city’s D.A. In that role, he made a name for himself as a reformer. Though he was controversial, Gascón was re-elected in 2011 and 2015. His successor, Chesa Boudin, has also been described as taking an anti-carceral approach.

In 2019, Gascón resigned from his role in order to join his mother in L.A. He was elected D.A. in 2020, amid heightened scrutiny of incarceration provoked by the murder of George Floyd.

As D.A., Gascón has focused on combating what he and his supporters see as abuses of the criminal justice system. He has declined to seek the death penalty or prosecute youths as adults. He has also claimed to exercise discretion when seeking sentencing enhancements (additional charges resulting in additional jail time for things like possession of a weapon), though he has sought gun enhancements over 15,000 times since taking office.

Nathan Hochman, Gascón’s challenger, is a career lawyer who has worked in the private sector and for the federal government. Born in L.A., he was a partner at two East-Coast law firms, before being tapped by George W. Bush in 2007 to oversee the enforcement of federal tax law. 

In 2011, Hochman returned to L.A. to serve on the city’s Ethics Commission. He ran for state Attorney General in 2022, losing to Democrat Rob Bronta.

Like Gascón, Hochman was once a Republican. The challenger changed his allegiance much more recently, becoming an independent in 2023. In his campaign, he has struck a more conservative tone than his appointment, promising to seek longer sentences and harsher punishments in an attempt to combat crime.

The Platforms

Hochman has criticized his opponent’s record as overly-broad in its principles. His website promises to repeal Gascón’s “blanket policies that have ‘de-carceration’ as their primary goal.” He promises to seek cash bail for many crimes and leave decisions on what sentences are pursued up to the prosecutor’s discretion.

Hochman would seek the death penalty in what he calls “extreme cases,” such as terrorism and mass shootings. He also promises to use sentencing enhancements more aggressively than Gascón.

Not all of the challenger’s policies, however, come from the right. Hochman’s campaign website includes promises to protect access to women’s reproductive healthcare, and to prosecure corporate polluters. He has described his alignment as being in the “hard middle.”

Gascón, on the other hand, has not published a platform. Instead, his website points to his existing record as D.A. However, most of the items listed concern occasions when he pushed forward with prosecution, in contrast to 2020 when he emphasized his discretion.

Of note, Gascón prominently displays his creation of the Labor Justice Unit, which prosecutes wage theft – the non-payment of wages owed to workers – and labor law violations. These are areas of special concern in L.A., given that workers in the city’s large garment industry often make far less than minimum wage.

At bottom, the D.A. race pits two of California’s most notable issues against one another: mass incarceration and crime. Prisoner populations in L.A. County have tripled in the last 50 years. Given that it costs over $100,000 to incarcerate one person for one year, this presents a significant drain on the state’s resources.

At the same time, Hochman has drawn support from those who are worried about criminal activity. 96% of his supporters say that they support him in part because they perceive him as more effective at combating violent crime, according to the L.A. Times. Property and violent crimes are both still above their pre-pandemic levels, though both are far lower than their long-term averages. Regardless of who wins, next week will be defining for the future of L.A.