Huh? Nathan Hochman Endorses Harris

Nathan Hochman is running for Los Angeles County District Attorney as an independent and one of his main talking points has been that he believes – clearly in sharp contrast to current DA George Gascon – that the DA’s office should be non-partisan, not at all political.

Then why did he endorse Kamala Harris for president in a recent interview on KTTV?   

Hochman said he endorsed Harris because she is a former prosecutor and Donald Trump – whom he did not vote for in the past despite his former affiliation with the Republican Party – is a convicted felon.

Hmm.  

Trump’s conviction is widely seen as a ginned-up political maneuver – no one else had ever been convicted of the same putative crime before. If Hochman believes it was a legitimate conviction on legitimate charges, that raises serious questions regarding his legal judgement.

And while it is true Harris is a former prosecutor, she also played an outsized role in ensuring the passage of the nearly demonic Propositions 47 and 57 (the first made a great deal of criminal behavior not a crime anymore, the latter let criminals out of jail) that Hochman has been railing against since the start of his campaign.  

Hochman does vigorously support the current Proposition 36, which rolls back many of 47’s unconscionable changes.

When a candidate for public office does something in a campaign that seems surprising, untoward, unexpected, unnecessary, contradictory to his consistent messages, and personally damaging, there is usually an interesting back story.

Especially when they are ahead.

By any metric, Hochman is (was?) utterly clobbering Gascon in the race.  Two-to-one lead in the polls and a 23-to-one lead in campaign cash.

He has been able to grow his support outside his more conservative base, he has snagged key endorsements, and – to this point – frightened away the mega-donors like George Soros who got Gascon elected in 2020.

If he thought endorsing Harris would help in admittedly deep blue LA County, he was wrong – the polls have shown that when it comes to this race local issues like high crime and feeling unsafe and Gascon’s incompetence and ideology are what matters to all groups of voters across the board.

There was no need, no benefit from publicly endorsing Harris.  His answer to the question should have been something like this:  I didn’t vote for Trump, I don’t like Trump, I’m worried about Harris’ record, but either way it doesn’t matter.  I am focused on the issues of crime and public safety here in LA County and replacing George Gascon to save our community.”

Done and dusted, easy-peasy.

But it does need to be stated that the interview itself is rather interesting, with the anchor not just asking Hochman whom he supports, but asking for Hochman to “make some news for us – who are you endorsing in the presidential race?”  Note the framing of the question – the anchors were clearly told ahead of time that Hochman would be doing something unexpected, i.e. “making news” for them by endorsing Harris.

Hochman’s announcement stunned his supporters – just look through the comments here on the Globe or on Twitter/X.

The most public rebuke of Hochman’s Harris endorsement has come from former three-term Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, who was one of Hochman’s earliest and strongest supporters – a campaign mentor, if you will.

While Cooley believes that “Gascon is a dangerous person and the worst DA in LA history” and that no one should vote for his re-election, he has officially pulled his endorsement of Hochman.

‘He didn’t need to do it,” Cooley said of the Harris move.  “He was already going to win.”

Cooley stressed the need to get rid of Gascon, but said he has cancelled a number of Hochman campaign and fund raising events he was to host in the next two months.

But beyond the political mechanics, Cooley called the decision “unprincipled,” especially in the light of Hochman’s past statements.

“He ran as an independent and he promised an independent, non-partisan, non-political District Attorney’s office and this was a partisan decision,” said a disappointed Cooley.

When asked about the wisdom of the Harris endorsement, the Hochman campaign said this:

“I have thanked Steve Cooley for his past support and for his steadfast position that D.A. George Gascon has enacted extreme, pro-criminal policies that have decimated our public safety. Now I am focused on defeating Gascon by uniting the 75% of voters who rejected Gascon on primary election night —  who cut across all political, demographic, and geographic lines —  in order to restore public safety and sensible prosecution policies in Los Angeles County.”

All that is well and good, one supposes, but it brings us back to the question of why.

Possibility One: the Hochman campaign is terrified of the concept of the “October Surprise.” All candidates fear something going very wrong in the last few weeks of a campaign –the candidate loses it and runs around naked at a fund raiser or the opponent does something big. In Hochman’s case, that would be some wealthy progressive Hollywood loony deciding to spend $50 million dollars on ads calling him a “Trumpian MAGA deplorable horrible mean nasty Trump Trump Trump supporter.”

That is a legitimate concern as that line of messaging is pretty much the only one the Gascon has.  They’ve already been using it, in fact:

“Mr. Hochman is gambling on voters forgetting that he remained a Republican until 2022–that’s six years of Donald Trump’s hate and bigotry,” Gascón campaign strategist Jamarah Hayner wrote. “In Los Angeles, that’s a risky bet.”

But that fear also presumes Gascon has the money to get that message out to the public and he does not, unless he gets the aforementioned savior zillionaire and even then he would have trouble making up his massive current voter fail. 

That may be an unjustified fear, especially since George Soros’ son Alex is already pulling back from the national district attorney takeover concept, recently moving $60 million to a different fund and the now very complicated relationship between Gascon’s Silicon Valley/Hollywood backers: Jacquleine Avant,  the mother of the wife of one of the CEOs of Netflix, was murdered during a home invasion robbery.

It is very true that by endorsing Harris, Hochman in theory (note – it could still happen anyway in some form or another – politicians lie and Gascon will not mention Hochman’s support of Kamala in his ads) cuts off the “Evil Trump/MAGA” avenue of attack. 

It is also very true that Gascon, when running against former DA Jackie Lacey, got millions in October in 2020 to push him across the finish line.

But it is also true that 2020 is very different from 2024 – no George Floyd riots, no criminal justice movement at the fore, and Gascon was polling well against Lacey. None of those things are happening now.

Possibility Two: The Hochman campaign learned that maybe – just maybe – there really is a rich human who will drop the money and decided to inoculate itself as well as possible from that campaign ad blitz.

And the Hochman campaign was told that could be stopped only if he says ‘Yay Kamala!”

Either way, Hochman unquestionably blemished his campaign with this poorly calculated move.

Or he really likes Kamala.  And that’s not great, either.