REUTERS
It’s morning again in the City of Angels.
Nathan Hochman, an assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, dethroned Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón in a landslide victory last week.
Hochman, running as an independent, took 61% of the vote versus a tepid 39% for the far-left Democratic prosecutor elected in 2020. The Ross LLP attorney, a criminal-justice and tax-law expert, will assume office Dec. 2.
It’s a quick comeback for the would-be hometown hero, who graduated Beverly Hills High School and received his law degree from Stanford.
He ran as a Republican in the 2022 California attorney-general race, losing to Democrat Rob Bonta. But trouble in the liberal paradise gave him a new opening.
“Folks don’t agree on much nowadays, but they all agree that safety is first and foremost what they expect from their government,” he told The Post in an interview.
Gascón survived two recall attempts — but not a challenge from the former federal prosecutor and Los Angeles City Ethics Commission president.
A rise in crime — along with opposition from the public-prosecutors union — fueled the fire for Gascón’s removal.
A March Los Angeles Police Department report showed a nearly 3% increase in violent crime and a staggering 9.5% uptick in robberies year over year.
Hochman’s victory came as state voters also passed Proposition 36 — which reverses laws Gascón bragged he helped write, upgrading certain crimes to felonies from misdemeanors, including some theft and drug-related offenses.
Hochman told The Post the proposition’s overwhelming support — 70% — will make his job easier when he takes office next month.
“On the third conviction, what used to just be misdemeanors now can become a felony,” he said.
“The court could order someone to go to state prison or sentence them to state prison. Same thing on the drug-use area. If you’re using serious drugs like meth, heroin, fentanyl, now that third conviction can be a treatment-mandatory option. The fourth conviction can be state prison. And with fentanyl poisoners — and I use that word intentionally — it provides additional tools to really ramp up the punishments and the resources to go after fentanyl poisoners.”
On Day One, the DA-elect said, he’ll take a “hard middle” approach and quickly get rid of certain restrictions he said negatively impacted victims and prosecutors’ abilities to do their jobs under the outgoing district attorney.
“There are blanket policies that say the DA’s office doesn’t prosecute juveniles, anybody under 18, for misdemeanor offenses, which includes misdemeanor theft, which is stealing just under $950. We will eliminate that prohibition,” the prosecutor said, adding he would end the prohibition on adding gang- and gun-enhancement charges to crimes.
LAist reported in 2021 that those enhancements tanked in cases prosecuted by Gascon’s office.
“The DA’s had a prohibition of prosecutors going with victim families to parole hearings when they’re confronting the murderer of their son or their daughter or their parent,” he added.
“For decades, prosecutors used to go with victim families because they get access to the parole board’s information and can make the best arguments on behalf of the victim families. I will remove that prohibition that Gascon imposed on his first day to allow prosecutors to again be champions of victims in the system.”
Hochman also told The Post he hopes to make his office a critical community partner in tackling the region’s homelessness crisis. More than 75,000 people in Los Angeles are considered homeless as of this year, per county data.
“What’s happened is that law-enforcement officers, when they enter homeless areas, they basically tell anyone who’s wondering why they’re not doing their job — that the DA has our hands tied,” Hochman said.
“So I will untie the law-enforcement officer’s hands to actually do their job. But again, the ultimate approach is not to see if we can fill the prisons to the breaking point, that if anything, is the failure of the criminal-justice system. The approach is whether or not we can deter this criminal conduct in the first place.”
The most populous county in the nation, nearly 10 million people call LA County home. But the county, like California, is still grappling with residents leaving the state en masse and a major public perception crisis when it comes to crime.
Hochman’s election could mark a turning point — if his crime reduction strategies work, the City of Angels could become that much more angelic in the years to come.