L.A. County's district attorney, one of the most progressive in the country, loses re-election

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, who took office promising sweeping reforms to the criminal justice system and then faced intense criticism over public safety issues, lost his bid for re-election, The Associated Press predicted.

Gascón lost to Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor who tapped into voters' concerns about crime and homelessness in the country's most populous county and largest law enforcement district.

In recent weeks, Gascón made national headlines when he announced he was in favor of seeking clemency Erik and Lyle Menendez, the brothers convicted of murdering their parents in 1989. The legal saga gained renewed public attention this fall after the debut of a Netflix miniseries and a documentary about her life.

Gascón was swept into office in 2020 amid national anger over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. He tapped into the progressive energy that surrounded this summer's protests over police misconduct and racial inequality, joining a political wave that in previous cycles helped elect combative prosecutors in cities like Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia.

Once in office, Gascón quickly set about implementing his reformist agenda.

He banned prosecutors in his office from seeking the death penalty and various sentencing enhancements, stopped prosecuting juveniles as adults and ended bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent crimes.

But many of these initiatives have been met with strong backlash, including from some rank-and-file district attorneys.

Gascón fended off two recall efforts, both of which failed to secure a spot on the ballot. Meanwhile, opposition to aggressive criminal justice reforms continued to grow across California. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled from office in 2022 after his critics attacked him as a soft-spoken progressive.

Gascón and other Los Angeles political leaders have sought to deflect allegations that the city is unsafe, a perception reinforced in part by videos of “smash-and-grab” shopping robberies.

Gascón faced 11 challengers in the county's nonpartisan March 5 primary and advanced to a runoff against Hochman, an independent who was running as a Republican for California attorney general in 2022.

Hochman promised to fight “lawlessness” and described his candidacy as a sharp break with the Gascón era.

“Attorney General George Gascón has miserably failed to protect our residents, resulting in a cycle of lawlessness that endangers all L.A. County residents,” Hochman said in a statement announcing his candidacy. “It’s time to stop playing politics with people’s lives. It’s time we have a prosecutor who fights for victims – not criminals.”

Gascón sought to change perceptions of his time in office, emphasizing that he understands the increasing concern for public safety. But public polls before the election showed him trailing Hochman. For example, in a poll conducted from September 25 to October 1, Hochman was 30 percentage points ahead of Gascón.

Hochman, 60, was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California in the 1990s. He then served as Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice under former President George W. Bush.

Gascón, 70, previously served as San Francisco's attorney general, a post once held by Vice President Kamala Harris before she won the attorney general's office. He also served as deputy chief of police in Los Angeles and chief of police in Mesa, Arizona and San Francisco.