Fundraising Total Suggest There's Not a Lot of Enthusiasm for

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The race between current LA District Attorney George Gascon and his possible replacement, Nathan Hochman, continues to look like it could be a blowout. An LA Times poll released last month showed Hochman ahead by a 2:1 margin.

If the Nov. 5 election were held today, 45% of likely voters in L.A. County would vote for Hochman, while just 20% would vote for Gascón, according to the new survey from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times…

…as of now, there is “broad-based support for Hochman across nearly every subgroup,” according to Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll, conducted between July 31 and Aug. 11.

Gascón’s image among voters is largely negative, with 21% offering a favorable opinion and 45% an unfavorable opinion. By contrast, 35% offered a favorable opinion of Hochman and just 7% held an unfavorable opinion.

Hochman ran for California Attorney General in 2022 as a Republican and lost, but is now running this race as an independent. He has racked up an impressive list of endorsements, especially from law enforcement groups in LA County.

But there’s another metric which suggests there is lots of enthusiasm for Hochman and relatively little for Gascon: Money. Here again, Hochman is blowing away the incumbent.

Nathan Hochman, the criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor who is challenging incumbent George Gascón for the seat, has raised nearly $3.9 million for his campaign as of Sept. 16. That’s over five times more than Gascón, whose fundraising stands at around $678,000.

The story gets even worse when you look at where the money is coming from.

Taking a look here and here, and extracting L.A. County ZIP codes from the data, we see that as of Sept. 10, about $381,000 of Gascón’s funds — or 57% of his total — came from L.A. County. Of the rest of Gascón’s money, about 23% of his total funds came from Bay Area counties and another 8% came from outside California.

For Hochman, the amount raised from within L.A. County was about $3.2 million, or 83% of his total funds.

So just looking at local money from the people impacted by the DA’s policies, Gascon has yet to raise $400,000 while Hochman has rasied $3.2 million. That’s a ratio of 8:1 in Hochman’s favor. And that doesn’t include so-called independent spending by outside groups. About $1.8 million has been spent to support Hochman plus another $469,000 to oppose Gascon. As of yet, no money has been spent to support Gascon though one group has raised $200,000 for that purpose.

Bottom line, there doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm for round two of DA George Gascon. In fact, Hochman is running on a platform he calls the “Blueprint for Justice,” much of which involves reversing decisions made by George Gascon. Here’s a sample:

Justice is not served by one-size-fits-all policies implemented by our current DA. On my first day in office, I will rescind all of Gascon’s pro-criminal, blanket policies that have “de-carceration” as their primary goal. These policies represent one end of the pendulum swing designed to release violent and serious criminals before they serve their full sentences and not prosecute such criminals in the first place to the full extent of the law…

I will eliminate Gascon’s prohibition of the use of strikes, sentencing enhancements, and special allegations. These laws were created by the Legislature, and in some cases the voters, to add additional prison time for the most violent crimes and the most violent offenders. Under my administration, violent criminals who use guns or other deadly weapons will be prosecuted and punished, not released back to the street to commit more crimes. The one group that has been most assuredly paying attention to Gascon’s pro-criminal policies has been the criminals themselves. Under my administration, they will understand that the lines will not be moved in their direction but fairly, justly, and consistently enforced in accordance with the evidence and the law.

This is shaping up to be a blowout. Gascon may have survived the recall efforts (just barely) but he’s almost certainly not going to survive this election.