Nathan Hochman: Candidate for Los Angeles DA

Nathan Hochman is a lifelong Los Angeles resident and he is fed up with George Gascon.

“I’ve watched over the past three years our safety and security go off into the abyss,” Hochman said.  “And there are three reactions you can have – move, complain, or do something about it and that’s why I’m running to replace him.”

It was thought by many that as the only Republican in the race, Hochman would have a certain advantage, at least in the primary with nine candidates splitting the vote in various ways.  But Hochman has changed his party registration to “decline to state” – commonly referred to as independent (though not in California due to the existence of the American Independent Party.)  

He did not do this out of political expediency but because the office of District Attorney is non-partisan and should always been seen as such, he said.

“I’m encouraging all of the candidates to join me (in becoming decline to state) to remove politics from the office,” Hochman said.

As a federal prosecutor in California, Hochman handled a range of cases, from gang-related offenses to public corruption to environmental crimes, leading the “Environmental Crimes Section” targeting air, water, and land polluters.

He also served as Assistant Attorney General of the United States in charge of the overseeing the Department of Justice’s Tax Division, a job which entailed oversight of more than 350 attorneys and a budget of more than $100 million, and for which he had to be – and was easily, unlike certain other Californians – confirmed for by the Senate.

In private practice now, he has served as a defense attorney and tax lawyer and has even successfully sued Gascon – on behalf the Association of Deputy District Attorneys – to bar him “from implementing a significant part of his sprawling criminal justice reform platform (when) a judge ruled his plan to end the use of sentencing enhancements in thousands of criminal cases violates California law.”

“I have a unique skill set to beat Gascon,” Hochman said.  “I’ve served on all sides of the courtroom: as a judge’s law clerk, a prosecutor, a defense attorney, and a plaintiff’s attorney.”

As to Gascon, Hochman said the DA’s hard-left policies have seriously damaged the community.

“The DA is there to enforce, not create, the law,” Hochman said.  “The DA cannot let political ideology determine who you prosecute and who you don’t.”

For example, Gascon’s policy of charging everyone up to 17 years and 364 days old as a juvenile has directly led to gangs using juveniles for hits and murders because they know the gang member will be out – at the latest – on his 25^th birthday.

Additionally, refusing to use gun enhancements and ignoring theft actually incentivizes criminals to continue to commit crimes.

Another pro-criminal stance of Gascon’s targeted by Hochman is refusing to send an attorney to attend parole hearings.  While it does follow Gascon’s decarceration ideology – don’t put people in jail, put them only if you have to, put them in for the least amount of time possible, and don’t try to prevent them getting out – it is a horrible and unprecedented disservice to the community and to the victims of the crime.

Another impact of Gascon’s soft-on-crime policies is the growing sense in the community that people must defend themselves because Gascon’s office will not.

That sense of hopeless vulnerability, said Hochman, is terrible for any community.  

“You cannot create a situation in which people believe they have to take justice into their own hands,” Hochman said.  “And that’s what Gascon has done.”

You can visit Hochman’s website here.