George Gascón, the savvy political survivor, Los Angeles County District Attorney, has run out of electoral life.
The incumbent prosecutor lost his bid for re-election against former Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Hochman. The race ended with 61.3% of the vote to Hochman’s 38.7%.
Despite some notable moves such as seeking early release from the Menendez brothers’ life without parole sentences and 30 years behind bars, Gascon’s one-term defeat has been a done deal for weeks. Backed by Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, Hotchman, a former George W. Bush appointee, held a double-digit lead over the former San Francisco de Gascon for much of the campaign.
Without a small irony, the success of Ryan Murphy’s nine-part Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Eric Menendez Story was instrumental in bringing the case back into the headlines.
In some slightly delayed payback from the bitter 2020 race, Jackie Lacey, Gascon’s predecessor for two terms in the now deeply divided DA office, is an ardent supporter of Hochman. Lacey told the former ethics commissioner in Los Angeles: “I’m endorsing Nathan Hochman for attorney general because I feel a lot less safe than I did four years ago.”
Nathan Hochman speaks at the KNX News 97.1 FM & LAT DA debate between George Gascón and his challenger on October 8, 2024.
Homelessness on the streets throughout the county and a notable increase in crime in Los Angeles declared Gascón a progressive through failed reminder efforts, but he has proven to have poison darts in this campaign.
Now Independent Hotchman’s DA victory is a stark contrast to his crushing defeat as a Republican at the hands of current Golden State Attorney General Rob Bonta just two years ago.
Even as Gascon asked Gov. Gavin Newsom last week to grant clemency to Eric and Kyle Menendez, Hochman’s victory could also complicate the brother’s desire to get out of their incarceration at the R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego. In discussing the development agenda last month, Hochman criticized Gascon for the “suspicious” timing of his sudden interest in the case. All indications are that the new attorney general, who will take office before a possible Dec. 11 hearing on the brothers’ possible resentencing, could bring them dramatically closer to being released from the sentences imposed in 1996. We will study this case carefully.
As the deadline has been mentioned before, this does not mean that Hochman will slam on the brakes in the Menendez case, with evidence of sexual abuse by their father undisputed. But, with no dispute that the brothers brutally murdered their parents Jose and Katie Menendez in their Beverly Hills home in 1989 with reloaded rifles, it doesn’t mean he won’t.
A source