After the news Tuesday, the disastrous George Gascón experiment in Los Angeles is almost certainly coming to an end on November 5.
A shocking poll showing a 30-point lead for challenger Nathan Hochman came out Tuesday morning, and a debate between the candidates Tuesday evening showed an incumbent playing defense.
Rampant burglaries, repeat offending murderers, reconsidering a lighter sentence for the Menendez brothers – none of the topics discussed were good for an elected District Attorney who has presided over a tumultuous period at the largest local prosecutor agency in the country.
Gascón’s main defense on the campaign trail is to parrot garbage-in, garbage-out crime numbers that come from the politicized criminal justice realm. He also attempts to paint Hochman as a Republican claiming to be an Independent. In today’s debate though, Gascón had to acknowledge that Los Angeles has gotten so bad that the whole county is either being victimized by crime or “fearful” it is coming.
He then, with his next breath, accused his opponent of “fearmongering.” So, correctly identifying the primary issue a District Attorney is supposed to solve?
The crime issue has managed to pierce the political polarization of 2024. Both supporters of Gascón and Hochman were least likely to cite their politics as reasons to support them, according to the poll released by the LA Times today and conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. Gascón supporters want more cops in prisons (91 percent support among his supporters); Hochman supporters want more violent criminals in prisons (96 percent). And there are more people, even in Los Angeles, who prefer the latter to the former.
Democratic messaging on this issue, whether through campaigns or compliant media, is not working in this cycle. Los Angeles is about to vote out a Soros DA. California is about to approve a tougher-on-crime voter proposition, if polls hold.
See also: A Win for Gascón Disguised As a Loss
Unsealed Affidavit in Criminal Case Against George Gascon’s ‘Ethics’ Deputy Reveals Depths of Corruption
In previous months, there was reason for hope for Gascón, even while trailing. Hochman was below 50 percent in previous polls, and there were enough undecideds to close the gap. Few voters knew anything about him. What voters were about to learn was, to be blunt, that Hochman is a likable but vanilla white male dad-type who ran for statewide office as a Republican in 2022. So Gascón drew a challenger who was trying to convince a Los Angeles electorate that splits about 75-25 Democrat that he is now a reformed Independent who endorses Kamala Harris.
Los Angeles voters probably don’t believe that, but they also don’t believe what George Gascón is selling.
Liberals in Los Angeles are considering (and often completing) their first gun purchase. Videos of looting mobs and street takeovers flood weekend social media feeds. Celebrities and professional athletes are getting robbed and killed – in public and in their homes. People with jobs and families are fleeing – either to less liberal neighboring counties or out of the state altogether.
As a result, as Hochman’s name recognition numbers have gone up — so has his support. A 30 percent gap (the poll was 51-21) for an incumbent less than a month out from a reputable polling firm is, in the political world, effectively insurmountable. Especially when one considers undecideds have been breaking for Hochman, and there is a groundswell of support in Los Angeles for bigger punishments for crimes even as low-level as shoplifting, and this race is effectively over.
