Super Tuesday is upon us, and the golden prize up for grabs is California. Former President Donald Trump will look to burnish his credentials with a dominant delegate victory, and President Joe Biden will also aim for a dominant show. But there are plenty of intriguing down-ballot races, not least the jungle primary for former Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat, as well as for several House seats. This series, Golden State Scramble, will look at all of the above and more. Part Three will take a closer look at George Gascon.
George Gascon, the embattled “godfather of progressive prosecutors,” is in the fight of his career, facing 11 opponents Tuesday as he seeks a second term as Los Angeles’ top prosecutor.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office is the largest local prosecutorial office in the United States, and its influence and policies are felt beyond its borders. The DA’s office employs nearly 1,000 lawyers, 300 investigators, and more than 800 clerical staff.
When Gascon was first elected to the post in 2020, his win was seen as a major victory for the movement to back liberal prosecutors after nationwide protests against police brutality.
On his first day in office, Gascon pushed through an ambitious agenda where prosecutors could no longer seek the death penalty nor try teenage offenders as adults. He also announced that a number of misdemeanor charges, including retail theft, trespassing, and simple drug possession, would no longer be prosecuted, leading to an overhaul of the criminal justice system that allowed lawbreakers to face less prison time, even in some cases involving violence.
Gascon, who had previously served as San Francisco’s district attorney as well as its police chief, pitched his “new path” forward to skeptical law enforcement leaders and lawmakers.
In return, he received — and survived — two recall attempts.
Since then, things have gone from bad to worse.
“There isn’t a community, I believe, in L.A. County that would say things are on the right track from a crime perspective,” Michael Bustamante, an election expert and public affairs consultant who is not involved in the race, said.
To win Tuesday’s election outright, Gascon would have to receive 50% of the vote, plus one, an unlikely outcome in the largest-ever field to seek the high-profile job. Anything less than an outright win triggers a runoff race between the top two candidates in November. While Gascon may survive the crowded primary, his chances in November are much slimmer.
“Nobody has really broken out. And with a large number of each candidate getting a decent amount of support, it could become a random thing who gets into the runoff,” Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, which focuses on social science research in Los Angeles, told the Associated Press.
The crowded primary field running against Gascon includes some of his own employees who claim he is grossly unfit for office and that Los Angelenos have suffered because of his soft-on-crime policies.
Almost all of his challengers said they would reverse his sweeping policy changes on their first day in office. Four candidates gunning for Gascon’s gig — former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman; Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorneys Jonathan Hatami and John McKinney; and David Milton, a retired Los Angeles County superior court judge — have gone on record and said if they were elected, they would do the “exact opposite of George Gascon.”
Hochman claimed Gascon’s policies ushered in the ‘Golden Age of criminals,” while Milton said Gascon’s policies were part of a national movement to “destroy our constitutional democratic republic.”
Gascon, who received more than $12 million in contributions in 2020, had only $112,000 in cash in his campaign coffer as of Feb. 17, according to campaign finance records. It’s a fraction of what political experts said is needed to run a successful county-wide campaign.
The lack of cash and two attempts to recall him hasn’t seemed to phase him.
Gascon recently told LA-ist that his “goal of integrating common-sense reforms into the legal system is an ongoing effort but one that is well worth the fight.”
“Reform means reducing the major drivers of mass incarceration while at the same time increasing victims services, developing community partnerships, collecting better data so we can be guided by long-term solutions not short-term Band-Aids, and always working to be in dialogue with the community so people know what reform means and what it doesn’t,” he added.
Gascon, who co-authored Proposition 47, a law that reclassified some felonies to misdemeanors, pushed back on criticism that the law, which increases the theft threshold to $950 from $400, caused an increase in property theft and led to more crime.
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Calmatters.org commentary writer Jim Newton recently wrote that Gascon, “once an emblem of the progressive prosecution movement,” is now “shunned by liberals, detested by conservatives, isolated from the city’s power structure and saddled with dismal approval ratings.”
“And yet, he has the advantage of facing a big field that includes a few formidable foes along with a bunch of non-starters, whose utter unsuitability for the office makes Gascon look brilliant by comparison,” he added.
