LA District Attorney George Gascón and challenger Nathan Hochman will debate tonight, which may be the last opportunity we have to see them square off against each other before November 5.
This must-watch debate will air live at 5 p.m. Pacific time on Oct. 8 on KNX (97.1 FM and 1070 AM) and also the digital and social media platforms of the LA Times and KNX.
In September of this year, the two answered questions on a Zoom forum hosted by Jewish Federation of Los Angeles. But Zoom suddenly developed technical difficulties, making the event less than ideal.
Then on Sunday, Sept. 30, ABC 7 hosted an in-person debate in Glendale.
Yet, tonight’s event is considered to be a particularly essential opportunity to compare the candidates side-by-side.
So let’s take another look at challenger Nathan Hochman
A conservative with an impressive resume, in 2007, Nathan Hochman was nominated by President George W. Bush to be the Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Tax Division, a prestigious position. In the years that followed, he served as a federal prosecutor, a federal defense attorney, and was head of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. In 2022, Hochman ran and lost as the Republican candidate for California Attorney General. (He now positions himself as independent.)
In general Hochman is a talented lawyer. As a defense attorney, Hochman represented former LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, in Baca’s 2017 federal trials. Yes, in the end Baca was convicted. But it took two trials to do it, mostly due to Hochman’s impressive set of skills as a legal knife fighter.
The truth factor
On the topic of campaign knife fighting, from the time he threw his metaphorical hat into the ring, Hochman’s main weapon has been his contention that crime has gone up alarmingly in LA County due to Gascon’s justice reform policies. Weapon number two is Hochman’s assertion that the sitting DA has a lousy relationship with law enforcement.
The problem with these two campaign claims, is that they don’t hold up well when subjected to fact checking. This is particularly true in the case of crime rates.
Here’s the deal.
Earlier this year, when Gascon was still facing a line-up of 11 challengers, Hochman pushed a similar narrative on social media and in interviews with the press. For example, he told the LA Times editorial board that the present DA “refuses to prosecute misdemeanors at all, and generally avoids prosecuting felonies.” When “asked to show evidence,” wrote the LA Times board, “he couldn’t.”
The LA Times is not the only news outlet that has questioned Hochman’s claim that Gascón and his policies have endangered LA County and its communities.
In July, the traditionally conservative-leaning editorial board of Orange County Register called Hochman out on his counterfactual approach to crime figures.
“Gascón was elected at the end of 2020,” the OC Board wrote. “Since 2020, it’s true that both violent and property crime reports are up in Los Angeles County. But both are also up in Riverside County, which has both a tough-on-crime DA and a tough-on-crime sheriff. While property crimes are down in Orange County, violent crimes have spiked too despite having a tough-on-crime DA.”
Riverside County, however, it is not the only county in the state that has crime figures that are higher than those in Los Angeles County
According to the October 2023 report by the Public Policy Institute of California, in addition to Riverside County, San Francisco County, Sacramento County, Alameda County, and Santa Clara County, all have higher jumps in crime than LA County.
The PPIC graph below illustrates the differences.
PPIC SOURCE: Authors’ calculation based on the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center, California Crimes and Clearances Files, 2021–2022.
PPIC NOTES: Chart shows the change in crime rates from 2021 to 2022 in California’s 15 largest counties, sorted by population size. Property crime includes burglary, motor vehicle theft, and larceny theft (including non-felonious larceny theft); violent crime includes homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
Cops & DAs
As for Gascon’s relationship with police, that’s a much longer conversation, which we’ll get to after the debate.
So, stay tuned.
PS: The LA Times published its endorsement of Gascon over the past weekend, and the points the LAT board makes are worth reading.
Then click the photo in the upper right hand corner. Hopefully that’ll still work.
where can this debate be viewed?
Editor’s note:
Hi, Jan,
Check the second Post Script at the bottom of the story and there’s a link. I don’t know how long it’ll work. But it works now.
Good luck. It was VERY interesting.
C.