Former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman continued to maintain a commanding leadership over the incumbent George Gascón in Los Angeles District Attorney’s Race as election results came in from the LA County Clerk’s office late Tuesday, November 5th.

Hochman had a double-digit lead when the first set of results came out shortly after 8:30 p.m., and continued to lead by double digits through three subsequent updates. At 21:45, he had 61% of the vote, while Gascón had 39%.

The election night results are only preliminary. The clerk’s office won’t finish tabulating the votes for days and has until Dec. 3 to certify the election results.

LIVE ELECTION RESULTS: See a graph with the latest vote counts

LA County District Attorney George Gascon at a pre-election night event at The Abbey in West Hollywood on Monday, November 4, 2024. (Photo by Jarret Liotta)

LA County District Attorney George Gascon at a pre-election night event at The Abbey in West Hollywood on Monday, November 4, 2024. (Photo by Jarret Liotta)

LA County District Attorney George Gascon at a pre-election night event at The Abbey in West Hollywood on Monday, November 4, 2024. (Photo by Jarret Liotta)

L.A. District Attorney candidate Nathan Hochman speaks to the media before voting at Paul Revere Charter Middle School in Brentwood, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

LA District Attorney candidate Nathan Hochman votes at Paul Revere Charter Middle School in Brentwood on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

L.A. District Attorney candidate Nathan Hochman speaks to the media after voting at Paul Revere Charter Middle School in Brentwood, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

Show caption

1 of 6

LA County District Attorney George Gascon at a pre-election night event at The Abbey in West Hollywood on Monday, November 4, 2024. (Photo by Jarret Liotta)

Expand

Although Gascón is the starter and has been the top voter in the March primary electionhe entered election day as powerless. Recent polls had Gascón after Hochman with 24 TO 30 percentage points.

Gascón, who is seeking a second term as LA District Attorney, took office in 2020 on a progressive platform focused on criminal justice reform and police accountability that resonated with voters amid national protests for the killing of George Floyd while in police custody.

But he struggled to get the same level of voter support this year.

Although he finished first in the primary, Gascón he captured only 25% of the votes – which some political observers considered a poor test for an incumbent. That race featured a crowded field of 12 candidates.

Meanwhile, Hochman ran on a tougher-on-crime platform. He created a narrative that L.A. County had become less safe over the past four years — and blamed Gascón for the increase in crime. Hochman has repeatedly described Gascón’s policies as lax a “social experiment” that “failed” and made criminals less afraid to commit crimes.

Whether Hochman’s message was effective in getting enough people to vote for him will become clearer in the coming days as more ballots are counted.

At least on election night, initial numbers from the clerk’s office showed Hochman with a comfortable lead over Gascón for now.

Heading into Election Day, many saw the district attorney race as a referendum on the current state of public safety in the nation’s most populous county.

On the campaign trail, both candidates cited different statistics to make their cases on whether LA County is safer since Gascón took office nearly four years ago.

The current prosecutor has insisted that violent crime, including homicide, is down, while acknowledging that some property crimes, such as car thefts have increased. He said his office has been addressing organized retail theft and has been “very aggressive” in its approach hate crimeshuman trafficking and waste theft.

Contrary to claims that he is too soft on criminals, Gascón said under his leadership, the prosecutor’s office prosecuted serious and violent crimes at rates comparable to before he took office.

At the same time, his campaign highlighted his work in criminal justice reform and promoting greater police accountability.

Fourteen innocent people who were wrongfully convicted, some as children, have been exonerated under Gascón’s administration, his campaign said. The DA’s office also filed five cases of officer-involved shootings and 10 cases of excessive force against law enforcement officers — a major difference from the single officer-involved shootings the DA’s office filed in the two decades before Gascón took office, according to his campaign. .

About two weeks ago, Gascón announced that he would ask for a judge to consider the resentment of Erik and Lyle Menendezthe famous case of two brothers who shot and killed their parents in 1989.

The brothers, now 56 and 53, are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, but Gascón wants the sentences reduced so the brothers can be paroled from prison. Lawyers for the brothers say their clients were victims of sexual abuse by their father.

While Gascón’s critics called him soft on crime, he accused his opponent in the DA race of wanting to return to an era of mass incarceration that disproportionately affected black people.

Hochman denied advocating either outright mass incarceration or what he called “Gascón’s release policy.” Instead, Hochman said that if he were prosecutor, he would take a “tough middle ground” approach, in which each case would be considered individually based on the defendant’s criminal history, the crime or crimes committed and the impact on any victims.

Hochman also dismissed Gascón’s claim that violent crime was down, saying the headline was based on Los Angeles Police Department statistics that only showed crime trends in the city of LA.

On the other hand, Hochman said, data from the California Department of Justice, which considers crime trends for all 88 cities in L.A. County, shows that between 2020 and 2023, violent crimes, property crimes and motivated crimes of hate increased by double digits, while shoplifting skyrocketed by 133% across the county.

On the campaign trail, both candidates also commented on their opponent’s past affiliation with the Republican Party.

Hochman ran for state attorney general as a Republican in 2022, but switched to “no party preference” last year. He described himself as a “centrist” and said he ran as an independent this year because the DA is a non-partisan office and the work of the DA should not be political.

Responding to his opponent’s criticism of his Republican past, Hochman said Gascón has been a Republican nearly twice as long as before either candidate switched parties. Gascón noted, for his part, that Hochman had been a Republican much more recently than he.