Former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman is still far ahead of incumbent, George Soros-backed George Gascón in the race for Los Angeles County District Attorney on the eve of Election Day, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Hochman leads Gascón by 25 points, the Times reported Sunday. A poll in early October showed that Hochman was ahead of Gascón by 30 points, greater than the 28 percent who were undecided at that point, suggesting a landslide.
The race has not moved much in several months. Voters are frustrated with a crime surge in L.A. and the indifference of Gascón, whose main priority has been criminal justice reform and reducing prison sentences given to criminals.
From the moment he was sworn in, Gascon ended the use of cash bail for many crimes and barred prosecutors from seeking the death penalty, as well as from seeking sentence enhancements in cases involving aggravated violence.
Gascón also ended the practice of trying juveniles as adults. That meant that violent criminals like Hannah Tubbs, a transgender woman who violently sexually molested a 10-year-old when she was still a 17-year-old man, would not have to register as a sex offender. (Tubbs was later arrested on murder charges in another county in California.)
Facing a recall election, Gascón rescinded the no-cash-bail policy. But many of his other radical policies continued.
Career prosecutors sued him arguing that he was instructing them to ignore state laws on sentencing. They won in court, as did a prosecutor who alleged that Gascón had retaliated against her for opposing his radical policies.
Gascón survived two recall efforts — one that failed to gather enough signatures, and another in which there were more than enough signatures, but county officials managed to disqualify enough signatures to avoid an election.
Hochman was the Republican candidate for California Attorney General in 2022, winning 41% of the vote. He is running for D.A. as an independent and has endorsed Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
Harris endorsed Gascón in 2020, as did Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, and the Democratic establishment — after dumping incumbent Jackie Lacey, the first black woman to hold the position. The Black Lives Matter movement had accused Lacey of insensitivity toward their concerns, and Soros pumped millions of dollars into the race, unseating Lacey and turning L.A. County into the flagship for radical criminal justice reform policies.
A resounding defeat for Gascón in a deep-blue Democratic Party hub would signal a thorough rejection of those policies. Other Soros-backed prosecutors, such as Pamela Price in Oakland, also face a reckoning with voters.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
