LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County voters will decide next month whether embattled District Attorney George Gascón will remain head of the nation’s largest prosecutor’s office in a race hinged on perceptions of public safety.
Gascón, who was elected in 2020 on a criminal justice platform alongside a wave of progressive prosecutors, faces 11 challengers in the March 5 nonpartisan primary. Voting is already taking place.
Gascón’s challengers say his policies are responsible for rising crime, including a series of brazen robberies at luxury stores that have drawn national attention from critics who say California’s Democratic leaders are allowing lawlessness. Property crime increased nearly 3% within the Los Angeles County sheriff’s jurisdiction from 2022 to 2023.
However, violent crime fell by more than 3% in the city of Los Angeles and nearly 1.5% in the county in 2023 compared to the previous year. It is still above pre-pandemic levels, and the sense of insecurity is so widespread that even Los Angeles’ mayor and police chief said last month they are working to repair the city’s image.
“There is, I don’t think, a community in LA County that would say that things are on the right track from a crime perspective,” said Michael Bustamante, an elections expert and public affairs consultant not involved in the race.
Gascón was elected after a summer of unrest following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
He immediately imposed his campaign agenda: not seek the death penalty; not prosecuting juveniles as adults; ending cash bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent crimes; and no longer filing enhancements that trigger harsher penalties for certain elements of crimes, recidivism or gang membership.
Gascón soon faced backlash, including a recall attempt within his first 100 days and a second attempt later, both of which failed to appear on the ballot.
His challengers include local prosecutors Jonathan Hatami and Eric Siddall and former federal prosecutors Jeff Chemerinsky and Nathan Hochman, a former attorney general candidate, all of whom have received notable support. Hochman is running television ads and his campaign said Thursday he has raised $2 million.
To win outright, a candidate must receive 50% plus one vote, an unlikely outcome in the largest field ever. Anything less will set up a second race in November between the top two candidates to lead an office made up of nearly a thousand attorneys prosecuting cases in the U.S.’s most populous county.
Experts think Gascón will survive the primaries, but are less optimistic about his chances in November.
“No one has really broken out. And because a large number of each candidate receives a fair amount of support, it can become arbitrary who ends up in the runoff,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation. , which focuses on social science research in Los Angeles.
The challenger field is largely campaigning for a reversal of almost all of Gascón’s progressive policies. They are taking a tougher approach to crime, but are conscious of not going too far for the Democratic electorate in LA County.
Chemerinsky, for example, vowed to reverse almost all of Gascón’s practices but said he would maintain the ban on the use of the death penalty.
Gascón’s first term was difficult. His orders for prosecutors to stop seeking longer prison sentences and using sentencing enhancements, among other controversial policies, were immediately met with negative reactions.
The union representing rank-and-file prosecutors has sued Gascón, arguing that he cannot ban the use of sentence enhancements for prior convictions under the state’s three strikes law. The California Supreme Court heard arguments last year and did not rule.
Gascón faced a slew of distrust from municipal authorities across the country. Other district attorneys took the unusual step of criticizing his policies as reckless and sought to move cases out of his jurisdiction.
He was also forced to roll back some of his biggest reforms, such as initially dropping more than 100 improvements and raising a hate crime from a misdemeanor to a misdemeanor. The move infuriated victims’ advocates, and Gascón backed down and reinstated the improvements in cases involving children, the elderly, and people because of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability.
“I think most of the damage to Gascón happened relatively early,” Sonenshein said.
The unions representing rank-and-file Los Angeles Police Department officers and Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs, respectively, did not endorse anyone in the primary. In 2020, both were strongly opposed to Gascón, a former police chief and two-term San Francisco district attorney.
The Association of Deputy District Attorneys, which represents LA County prosecutors, has endorsed Siddall, the former vice president.
The other candidates are David S. Milton, Debra Archuleta, Maria Ramirez, Dan Kapelovitz, Lloyd “Bobcat” Masson, John McKinney and Craig J. Mitchell.