It’s morning again in the City of Angels.
Nathan Hochman, assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, unseated Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón last week in a landslide victory.
Hochman, who ran as an independent candidate, received 61% of the vote, compared to a tepid 39% for the far-left Democratic prosecutor who was elected in 2020. The Ross LLP attorney, an expert in criminal and tax law, will take office on December 2. .
It’s a quick comeback for the future hometown hero, who graduated from Beverly Hills High School and received his law degree from Stanford.
He entered California’s 2022 attorney general race as a Republican and lost to Democrat Rob Bonta. But trouble in the liberal paradise gave him a new opening.
“People don’t agree on much these days, but they all agree that security is first and foremost what they expect from their government,” he told The Post in an interview.
Gascón survived two recall attempts — but no challenge from the former federal prosecutor and chairman of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.
A rise in crime – along with opposition from the prosecutors’ union – fueled the fire for Gascón’s removal.
A Los Angeles Police Department report from March showed a nearly 3% increase in violent crimes and a staggering 9.5% increase in robberies year over year.
Hochman’s victory came as voters in the state also approved Proposition 36 — which overturns laws that Gascón bragged he helped write, upgrading certain crimes to misdemeanors, including some thefts and drug-related offenses.
Hochman told The Post that the proposal’s overwhelming support — 70% — will make his job easier when he takes office next month.
“On the third conviction, what was previously just a misdemeanor can now become a misdemeanor,” he said.
“The court can order a person to go to state prison or sentence him to state prison. The same goes for the drug space. If you use serious drugs, such as meth, heroin, or fentanyl, that third conviction may be a treatment-mandated option. The fourth conviction could be state prison. And with regard to fentanyl poisoners – and I use that word deliberately – it provides additional tools to really ramp up the penalties and the tools to go after fentanyl poisoners.”
On day one, the elected prosecutor said, he will take a “hard middle” approach and quickly end the restrictions Gascón has put in place, which he says are harming victims and hampering prosecutors’ ability to to do their work under the outgoing prosecutor.
“There is a general policy that states that the District Attorney’s Office will not prosecute youth under the age of 18 for offenses, including theft of anything less than $950. We will lift that ban,” the prosecutor said.
He will also end the ban on adding gang and gun enhancement charges to crimes and other Gascón warrants.
“The District Attorney’s Office had imposed a ban on prosecutors accompanying victims’ families to parole hearings when confronting the killer of their son, daughter or parent,” he said.
“For decades, prosecutors dealt with victim families because they could access parole board information and make the best arguments on behalf of victim families. I will lift the ban that Gascón imposed on his first day in office so that prosecutors can once again be advocates for victims in the system.”
Hochman also told The Post that he hopes to make his office a crucial community partner in addressing the region’s homelessness crisis. More than 75,000 people in Los Angeles are considered homeless this year, according to county data.
“Law enforcement officers, when they come into homeless areas, they’re basically telling anyone who’s wondering why they’re not doing their job — that the DA’s office has our hands tied,” Hochman said.
“So I will loosen the hands of the law enforcement officer to actually do his job. But again, the ultimate approach is not to see if we can fill the prisons to the breaking point; if anything, that is the failure of the criminal justice system. The approach is whether we can deter this criminal behavior at all.”
Nearly 10 million people call LA County home; it is the most populous in the country.
But the county, like California, continues to struggle 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.
“Crime is illegal again,” cheered Shea Sanna, a deputy district attorney whose retaliation suit against his outgoing boss is one of more than two dozen involving office whistleblowers.
Sanna worked on one of Gascón’s most criticized cases, protesting the prosecutor’s decision to try James “Hannah” Tubbs, then 26, as a minor for molesting a ten-year-old girl.
Tubbs, convicted of murdering a friend for more than $100, was sentenced to just two years in a juvenile treatment center — despite having already spent time in an adult prison.
“Hochman’s focus will be on protecting law-abiding citizens, not murderers and rapists,” Sanna told Fox News Digital.
If the new district attorney’s crime-fighting strategies work, the City of Angels could become more angelic again.
