Police cash flows to Hochman in D.A. race while support for Gascon dries up

Updated: 21-10-2024, 10.50 AM

When George Gascón ousted Jackie Lacey from office in 2020, it marked the end of the most expensive district attorney’s race in L.A. County history.

Four years later, the money is flowing again — just not to Gascón.

Gascón raked in $13 million in 2020, with more than half coming from committees organized by wealthy Bay Area residents shelling out to support criminal justice reforms after the murder of George Floyd. Lacey stockpiled $7 million, with 72% of that money coming from police unions political committees.

Those law enforcement factions have returned in 2024 to boost Gascón’s challenger, former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman. But the wellspring of progressive cash that fueled Gascón’s run for office in 2020 has dried up when he needs it most for his flagging reelection bid.

As of Oct. 14, Hochman and outside groups supporting him have raised nearly $10.4 million in campaign donations, compared with $1.2 million for Gascón and his outside supporters, according to an analysis conducted by The Times.

The massive financial advantage has allowed Hochman to launch a media blitz painting Los Angeles as a crumbling, crime-ridden dystopia under Gascón’s watch. Recent polls showing Hochman leading by as much as 30 percentage points among likely voters.

Hochman has spent over $1.1 million on television airtime and production of advertisements, and an outside committee supporting the challenger has spent nearly $1.9 million on digital ads running on streaming platforms such as Hulu. The campaign’s ads feature testimonials from crime victims and line prosecutors expressing disdain for the incumbent’s “restorative justice” agenda.

While Hochman’s largest outside boosters are law enforcement unions, he has also attracted support from the business community and real estate firms. Billionaire Rick Caruso — the former mayoral candidate and L.A. mall mogul — has given Hochman $250,000 through a political action committee. The candidate says store owners and other retailers are “getting killed” by Gascón’s policies, which include not prosecuting misdemeanor charges for drug possession or trespassing.

“It’s created an unsustainable course of action that the business community looks at and thinks to themselves how are we going to continue doing business if we can’t keep our tenants, our renters, our customers safe … if we can’t even keep ourselves safe,” Hochman said.

Gascón has not spent any money on television ads, focusing instead on mailers, which can easily get lost in the flood of campaign leaflets that clog Angelenos’ mailboxes every election season. Even then, Hochman has still outspent the incumbent 11 to 1 on such campaign literature.

Some experts believe donors abandoned Gascón after his weak showing in the primary, finishing first but with only 25% of the countywide vote.

“These are sophisticated donors, and not only are they seeing the polls in this race, they also saw what happened to Chesa Boudin in San Francisco,” said Roy Behr, a longtime consultant to Democratic campaigns in Los Angeles, referring to the recall of Gascón’s progressive successor. “They’re looking at all this information and saying this is a lost cause.”

Of Gascón’s 10 largest 2020 outside donors, only four have given money to committees in support of his reelection campaign this year. Liberal philanthropist George Soros poured $2.45 million into Gascón’s run in 2020, but has offered the incumbent nothing this cycle.

Records show Soros has spent $3.7 million in federal races this year, about a third of what he spent in 2020, with a large chunk of that money going to Vice President Kamala Harris’ Victory Fund and the Democratic National Committee. He’s contributed to just one California candidate this cycle.

A Soros spokesman, Michael Vachon, said in a statement that the billionaire’s “focus this cycle is on the presidential contest.”

“This reflects the unprecedented stakes facing the nation and should not be misconstrued as an abandonment of District Attorney Gascón or any other local leader who is championing sensible, effective and humane approaches to public safety,” Vachon said.

Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings and his wife, philanthropist Patty Quillin, combined to spend $2.2 million in support of Gascón in 2020, but contributed just $9,000 this year. M. Quinn Delaney, founder of an Oakland-based advocacy group that fights for racial justice, has spent $109,000 to boost Gascón this cycle, making her his second-largest donor. But that’s still less than a fifth of the $553,000 she spent in 2020.

E-mails to representatives for Delaney, Hastings and Quillin were not returned.

Recent polls show voters are highly anxious about public safety and supportive of tough-on-crime measures like Proposition 36, when four years ago many of them were marching in the streets calling for police accountability.

“George Gascón hasn’t changed at all in the last four years, but the world around him has changed dramatically and he either hasn’t been able or willing to adjust to those changes,” said Dan Schnur, a former advisor to Republican politicians in California who teaches political communications at USC.

Gascón says his direct fundraising is on pace to be similar to what it was in 2020. But the tidal wave of money supporting Gascón from independent committees — referring to political action committees and organizations that can raise far more from individual donors than candidate-controlled committees because they don’t have to abide by donation limits, as long as they don’t coordinate with candidates — is gone.

The district attorney also believes he’s been hurt by attacks from Republicans on the national stage, noting that former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have invoked his name on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, the race is not on the radar of national Democrats as it was in 2020, when Harris and others endorsed Gascón.

Insha Rahman, vice president for advocacy and partnerships at the Vera Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for criminal justice reform, said Gascón’s disappearing campaign dollars are part of a broader national trend.

Rahman pointed to a study by the Bridgespan Group of philanthropic dollars spent annually on criminal justice reform — including nonprofit organizations, policy campaigns, and electoral races — which showed such spending peaked around $416 million in 2019, dipping to $207 million in 2022, the last year captured in the study.

“Democrats this cycle … are sort of saving their dry powder for the presidential race, or see just how close the Senate races are,” Rahman said.

Hochman, meanwhile, has tapped many of the same sources Lacey did in 2020. Nearly a quarter of his total funding between direct donations and outside committees, $2.5 million, has come from police unions that have long served as a foil to Gascón. His other major outside contributors include backers of failed attempts to recall Gascón and Gov. Gavin Newsom, such as Republican megadonor Gerald Marcil. Real estate brokers, investors, developers and property managers have also been big supporters, with $2.4 million coming from donors in those industries.

Gascón has tried to use the contributions to paint Hochman as a wealthy champion of conservative ideas and corrupt police officials, pointing to his time as a defense attorney working for convicted former L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca and “tax evaders.”

Hochman, who is running as an independent, has largely eschewed partisan politics in the race other than to parry Gascón’s barbs and focused most of his ad spending on public safety.

In one ad, Hochman stands in front of a homeless encampment that sits on Spring Street.

“Homelessness is exploding throughout downtown and throughout the entire county as a direct result of those failed social experiment policies that Gascón has enacted,” Hochman says into the camera, standing just a block from the D.A.’s office.

Homelessness is down slightly in L.A. County this year and fell by 2.2% in the city compared with 2023, according to a study conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. The number of people who are unsheltered or living outside that Hochman was referencing is down by even higher percentages.

Criminal justice experts argue it’s difficult to draw a direct line between the D.A.’s policies and homelessness; but Behr, the political consultant, says “voters don’t know data” and are unlikely to fact-check ads beaming at them across social media and television.

Gascón, meanwhile, simply doesn’t have the funds to launch counterprogramming.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.