Nathan Hochman, who mounted a vigorous campaign to lead the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, had a substantial lead over incumbent George Gascón, according to early results Tuesday night.

The race to lead the country’s largest prosecutor’s office has been contentious, as Hochman and others harshly rejected policies Gascón implemented when he was elected four years ago.

Speaking to supporters on election night at a rally in Beverly Hills, Hochman said deputy district attorneys working under Gascón had been trying to do justice with their hands tied behind their backs.

“I am here to tell you that your hands will no longer be tied,” he said.

He later added: “We will move on and get back to the business of justice. Make crimes illegal again.”

Gascón, who is seeking a second four-year term, was seen as the front-runner of the criminal justice reform movement. But the political conversation, particularly in this election year, has shifted from focusing on reform to focusing on public safety.

Who is Hochman?

Hochman, a former federal prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, has vowed to reverse all of Gascón’s policies in favor of an approach he calls “the hard middle ground.” He has repeatedly said he rejects Gascón’s “extreme pro-crime and decarceration policies.”

He added: “I also reject extreme policies of mass incarceration.”

Outside committees working to help elect Hochman have raised more than $7.2 million compared to Gascón’s $605,000, according to an analysis by LAist.

Hochman was born and raised in Beverly Hills. He attended Brown University and Stanford Law School. As a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, one of his biggest cases involved the prosecution of corrupt sheriff’s deputies.

He entered private practice in 1997 and has worked primarily as a white-collar defense attorney. In 2008, then-President George W. Bush appointed Hochman to oversee the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He served for one year.

In one of his most high-profile cases, Hochman defended former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who was convicted of obstruction of justice in 2017 for covering up abuse of inmates at the Men’s Central Jail.

In 2020, as some people called for reduced funding for law enforcement, Hochman and his brother created the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Foundation, an independent group that raises money for the county department.

From 2011 to 2016, Hochman was chairman of the City of Los Angeles Ethics Commission, a volunteer position. The panel enforces the city’s lobbying and campaign finance rules.

In 2022, he was the Republican candidate for Attorney General of California, losing to Democrat Rob Bonta. Last year, Hochman changed his party affiliation to “no party preference.”

How do we get here?

When Gascón was elected to the position four years ago, he was buoyed by a national criminal justice reform movement that gained momentum after the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the protests that followed.

Although many other progressive district attorneys were elected to office at the time, Gascón was the best known.

One of the main goals of criminal justice reform has been to help reduce mass incarceration. Gascón’s reforms fundamentally changed the way Los Angeles prosecutors operate.

The day he was sworn in, he presented a broad set of directives. Prosecutors would no longer be able to request the transfer of minors to adult court. They could no longer seek sentencing enhancements, which allowed prosecutors to add many more years to someone’s potential sentence for things like carrying a gun or acting on behalf of a gang, or filing charges for certain low-level misdemeanors.

And they could no longer seek the death penalty (California has a moratorium on executions while Gov. Gavin Newsom is in office, but that doesn’t stop prosecutors from seeking the death penalty for a defendant when he goes to trial).

Those changes irritated some of the prosecutors in the District Attorney’s Office. Three weeks after Gascón took office, the union representing Los Angeles County prosecutors filed a lawsuit seeking to block some of his directives. Some of them ran against him in the March primary.

The effort to oust Gascón from office has been vocal, with his detractors blaming him for a rise in local crime (particularly property crimes), including high-profile retail robberies.

What’s next?

Gascón appeared at a California Democrats watch party in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday night, but did not concede the race.

Before polls closed, he told LAist that he was optimistic that in-person voters would help reduce Hochman’s expected lead.

Votes are still being counted in Los Angeles County.

LAist reporters Erin Stone and Robert Garrova contributed to this story.