BREAKING: Gascon Out-Fundraises Hochman

For the first time since the campaign for Los Angeles District Attorney began last year, current DA George Gascon actually got more money during a campaign finance reporting than his opponent Nathan Hochman.

Between September 22 and October 19, Gascon raised about $86,000 while Hochman only raised about $62,000.

Of course, there is a rather huge enormous humongous caveat to those figures – Hochman hit the legally prescribed fundraising limit of $2.5 million dollars on September 24 so had to literally STOP raising money for his campaign.

In fact, that $62,000 Hochman raised was in the first two days of the reporting period, pushing him to the limit (by the way, if he was allowed to raise more money, extrapolating that out that would be nearly another million bucks.)

Suffice to say, the campaign spending limits are not an issue for Gascon this time around. Overall, he has raised about $605,000 throughout the campaign – Hochman?  About $3.4 million (the $2.5 limit only applies to the general election coming up, not the primary, hence the total being higher than $2.5 million.)

Even worse for Gascon is that, as of last week, he had about $100,000 in cash left – Hochman had more than $550,000.

Even more worser for Gascon is the amount of money each campaign spent in that crucial month-long period running up to the November 5 vote.  Hochman spent $1.1 million, Gascon spent about $40,000.

Guess who has TV ads and guess who really doesn’t?

Even though Hochman hit the contribution limit, he had already planned a couple of fund raising events.  He went forward with those events, but had the donations went to LA DA Foundation which he created last month once he thought he would hit the limit.  The foundation, which will continue no matter what happens on November 5 (like we all don’t know – Hochman has a two-to-one lead over Gascon in the polls) “will support programs that assist crime victims, youth education and re-entry programs to prevent recidivism.”  The foundation has repeatedly raised tens of thousands of dollars since.

As for Gascon’s contributors, Jane Fonda’s “climate PAC” dropped another $1,500 and Jackie Goldberg – she of the LA school board and pretty much every other government agency you can imagine – dropped $1,000.  Of course, that wasn’t her own money – it was from the leftovers from her 2020 school board campaign (she’s the current board president and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America – by the way, but she has irked other Socialists, so she may be a Menshevik rather than a a straight-up Bolshevik).

Gascon is still getting some money from his major 2020 backers – Patty Quillan, through yet another very creepy entity called Democracy Engine , donated $10,500 to Gascon.

From a previous piece on Quillan, the wife of one of the guys who started Netflix:

In the 2020 election, Gascon raised about $9 million between now and voting day.  The vast majority of that funding – about $7 million – came from only 10 donors, with George Soros and Patty Quillan – wife of the founder of LinkedIn – leading the way.

Now, both campaigns have received help from outside sources called “independent expenditure” groups.

Technically, these groups are supposed to be nice committed people who want to support a candidate but what to do it on their own. Well, okay.

Be that as it may, outside groups have spent about $1 million on in support of Gascon, and $5.2 million for Hochman.

In 2020, when Gascon defeated then-DA Jackie Lacey at this in the campaign, Gascon had raised and/or spent on him about $12 million dollars. Most of that was on “independent” expenditures, but combining the direct and and independent contributions the Los Angeles Times notes that “Gascón’s top 2020 donors have given just 2% of their previous total.”

For example, noted Bond villain George Soros has gone from about to $2.5 million to, well, exactly zero.

So, George, take this tiny fundraising victory for what it is – the last you will have this year.