In the LA District Attorney Race, the rhetoric is shifting from reform to fear

Three years ago, George Gascón rode a wave of collective outrage after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis to become Los Angeles’ district attorney by promising to make the criminal justice system fairer and, most importantly, rein in the police.

To win reelection and stay in office, Mr. Gascón will have to tap into a different kind of emotion: fear — specifically the perception that Los Angeles is less safe and that his policies as district attorney have made it so. an argument made by many of his challengers but largely unsupported by data.

“I think for a lot of people this 2024 race has returned to the lockdown of law and order,” Mr. Gascón said in an interview.

Mr. Gascón’s victory in 2020 was one of the most consequential election results of the social justice and police accountability movement, which was sparked by the killing of Mr. Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. And for the national movement that has helped elect progressive prosecutors in jurisdictions across the country in recent years, the victory in Los Angeles was momentous: The county, about the size of Ohio, has the nation’s largest prosecutor’s office, the largest prison system and a long history of police abuse.

But Mr. Gascón, 69, is running for re-election in a very different political climate. Demands for equality and accountability in policing and prosecution have been overtaken by concerns about what to do about crime — the question that has dominated the district attorney race in Los Angeles.

The 11 candidates Challenging Mr. Gascón includes judges, lawyers from his own office and former federal prosecutors, almost all of whom are to varying degrees to Mr. Gascón’s right.

“Yes, crime has increased,” Jonathan McKinney, a prosecutor in Mr. Gascón’s office and one of the challengers, told the crowd at a debate this fall hosted by the Santa Monica Democratic Club. “That’s why you’re all here tonight.”

The first round of elections is in March, and if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote – unlikely given the low numbers each candidate is currently voting for – the top two candidates will face each other in November.

Even as Mr. Gascón’s opponents paint a picture of crime spiraling out of control, the data indicate that Los Angeles, like much of the country, is becoming safer in crucial categories of violent crime, such as murder, as social and economic disruptions from the pandemic’s disappearance. In the city of Los Angeles, which makes up about 40 percent of Los Angeles County’s population, violent crimes are down substantially compared to 2021, Mr. Gascón’s first year as president.

Murder, often a proxy for people’s broader views on crime, is down about 18 percent, while rape is down almost 19 percent. But property crimes, including burglary and auto theft, are up, the only crime tracked by the FBI to increase in 2023.

In 2020, progressives like Mr. Gascón often tried to use data to convince voters concerned about crime that their feelings did not always match reality.

This time he chooses a different approach.

“We can talk to people about data, but it doesn’t really resonate,” he says. “So I stopped talking about dates. I’m just throwing it out there to sprinkle, but I’m trying to immediately connect with people on a human level. Acknowledge their feelings, because their feelings are real.”

Mr. Gascón faces opposition not only from candidates to his right, who accuse him of making Los Angeles less safe and failing to take a tough stance on crime, but also from liberal-minded voters who worried about crime or disenchanted with his policies.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Mauricio Caamal said he was routinely harassed by police. He was also the victim of a crime when he was four years old, and his father was robbed and murdered in downtown LA

As 2020 dawned and the nation was roiled by protests over Mr. Floyd’s killing, Mr. Caamal was drawn into the streets over a police killing closer to home: a Los Angeles deputy shot Andres Guardado, an 18-year-old …old guard, five times in the back, killed him. Mr. Caamal, 32, embraced calls to dismantle the police and supported Mr. Gascón.

Mr. Gascón first came to prominence in the mid-2000s as an assistant police chief in Los Angeles. More than a decade later, after serving as police chief in San Francisco and then winning two terms as that city’s district attorney, he returned to Los Angeles to run for district attorney.

During his time in office, Mr. Gascón has pursued dozens of cases against police officers, a rarity under his predecessor. But earlier this year, after a lengthy investigation, he declined to file charges against the deputy in Mr. Guardado’s case, ruling there was “insufficient evidence” to support the charge.

“I think that in itself should be enough not to vote for him again,” Mr Caamal said.

Mr. Gascón rebuffed an early attempt to recall him from office, which was backed by some prosecutors working for him, after his opponents failed to secure enough signatures to force new elections. That allowed him to avoid the fate of his San Francisco counterpart, Chesa Boudin, who was recalled last year amid a bitter debate in that city over property crimes and visible misery on the streets.

To win another term, Gascón says he must sharpen his message to tie reforms to public safety, arguing, for example, that second chances and milder sentences reduce recidivism and improve safety in the long term.

“You can’t really achieve sustainable public safety if you don’t address the inequities in the system,” he said. He added: “So it’s a much more nuanced campaign in the sense that even to get to the same place, we have to go through a process where we have to explain the link between reforms and public safety much better.

“I feel less safe since he’s been there,” said Karim Bailey, 42, a high school teacher in South Los Angeles whose classroom discussions often center on neighborhood crime and policing. His car’s catalytic converter has been stolen twice.

Mr. Bailey said he could not remember which candidate he voted for in 2020, but that he would not support Mr. Gascón this time.

“In many of the cases I have seen in which he has been involved, he appears to be putting the interests of the criminal above the interests of the general public,” he said.

In 2020, Maria-Isabel Rutledge tapped for Mr. Gascón’s campaign. She is backing him again this time, arguing that he needs more time to implement reforms she believes are needed to make the system fairer.

Ms. Rutledge, 70, is a retired teacher who lives in South Central Los Angeles, the epicenter of the 1992 uprising following the acquittal of several police officers in connection with the beating of Rodney King.

“I know that if he continues on the same trajectory, hopefully he will be able to effect change,” she said of Mr. Gascón. “It is difficult and challenging to reform the outdated institutionally racist system,” she said. “The system of racism is very much embedded in the United States, but we have to keep moving in the right direction, we have to keep tinkering with it little by little.”