A canny political survivor, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón has run out of electoral lives.
The incumbent prosecutor has lost his bid for reelection against ex-U.S. Assistant Attorney General Nathan Hochman. The race end with the latter getting 61.3% of the vote to the former’s 38.7%.
Despite some high profile moves such as seeking an early release from the life without parole sentences of the Menendez brothers and their 30 years behind bars, the one-term Gascón’s defeat was a done deal weeks ago. Backed by Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos and Oscar nominated documentary director Rory Kennedy, former George W. Bush’s appointee Hochman has held a double digit lead over ex-San Francisco D.A. Gascón for most of the campaign.
With no small irony, the success of Ryan Murphy’s nine-part Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story was instrumental in bringing the case back to the headlines.
In some revenge served slightly delayed from the bitter 2020 race, Jackie Lacey, Gascón’s two-term predecessor in the now deeply divided D.A.’s office, is an enthusiastic supporter of Hochman. “I am endorsing Nathan Hochman for District Attorney because I feel a lot less safe than I did four years ago,” Lacey said for the ex-LA Ethics Commissioner.
Nathan Hochman speaks at the KNX News 97.1 FM & LAT DA debate between George Gascon and his challenger on Oct. 8, 2024.
Homelessness on the streets all over the county and a perceived increase in crime in L.A. dogged self declared progressive Gascón through failed recalled efforts, but proved poison arrows in this campaign.
Now Independent Hochman’s D.A. victory is a stark contrast to his crushing defeat as a Republican by incumbent Golden State Attorney General Rob Bonta just two years ago.
Even with Gascón asking Gov. Gavin Newsom last week to grant clemency to Erik and Kyle Menendez, Hochman’s win also could complicate the sibling’s desire to get out of their incarceration at the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego. In the D.A. debate last month, Hochman slammed Gascón for the “suspicious” timing of his sudden interest in the case. All indications are the newly minted D.A., who takes office before a December 11 hearing on a potential resentencing of the brothers, that could see them move considerably closer to release from their 1996 imposed sentences. will be going over the case carefully.
As Deadline reported before, that doesn’t mean Hochman will hit the brakes on the Menendez case, with evidence of the sexual abuse they suffered from their father without dispute. But, with zero dispute that the brothers brutally killed their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills home in 1989 with reloaded shotguns, it doesn’t mean he won’t.
