Candidates vying to become Los Angeles County's next district attorney barely made it to the stage for the debate.

At the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, cowering in a dozen studio chairs with political and ideological opponents separated by inches, it took nearly an hour for the largest candidate ever to run for public office to finish his opening statement. spent. The candidates, most of whom are longtime judges and prosecutors, are challenging the District. Atty. Georges Gascon cried out for mic time, but mic time was primarily used to convey a message similar to his resume.

“My answer is no,” said former federal prosecutor Jeff Chemerinski. Our top priority is public safety. ” Deputy Ward Atty. Jonathan Hatami runs to “ensure the safety of children.” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Debra Archuleta asked whether voters are “safer now than they were three years ago.”

At the Feb. 8 event, there was little room for substantive policy debate between a packed stage and an enthusiastic crowd that occasionally interrupted discussions.

In some ways, the forum reflected the crowded, confusing and confusing nature of the campaign for voters. Recent polls show many Angelenos are fed up with Gascón and worried about crime, but two-thirds of voters are still undecided about the March primary. Recent USC/Dorn Seif poll.

Gascón is likely to slip into the general election, but observers say he will be vulnerable in November. But with crowds so dense and no challengers rising more than single digits in the polls, it's difficult for any real threat to emerge.

“I think a lot of the other candidates can smell the blood, so they're doing this thing to see what happens,” said Brian Van Riper, a political consultant not involved in the campaign. “I'm jumping on board,” he said. “The interesting question is how do they pop up?”

Nearly all of the challengers want to lift some or all of Gascón's restrictions on the use of the death penalty, enhanced sentencing and the prosecution of juveniles as adults. The challenge is finding a way to stand out, not just among district attorneys, but among district attorneys without moving too far to the right of increasingly progressive Los Angeles voters.

Leading the pack in fundraising is Nathan Hockman, a former Republican candidate for state attorney general who is now running as an independent to “keep the politicians out” of the prosecutor's office. Hochman raised well over $1.5 million to buy television ads, which are often key to communicating with L.A. County's more than 5 million registered voters.

Mr. Hockman, a longtime federal prosecutor and defense attorney and former head of the L.A. Ethics Commission, was in a November stalemate with Mr. Gascón, who raised $12.4 million in ousting Jackie Lacey in 2020. His fundraising skills could be crucial in the matchup.

Hochman claimed he was miscast as a conservative in the campaign, describing his politics as “socially moderate” and his approach to criminal justice as “strongly centrist.”

He said his approach requires figuring out “who are the real threats to public safety that should be in jail and, let's be honest, who aren't?” said. As a first-time non-violent offender, he said he “still has to take responsibility for his actions, but community service and diversion may be the goal.”

Hockman brings his defense background to bear in the competition against many experienced prosecutors. He has advocated for expanded use of mental health and drug courts to get low-level offenders into treatment, but aggressive prosecution of fentanyl dealers has also been a hallmark of his campaign message.

Hochman lashes out at suggestions he's too conservative for L.A. voters. He says he never voted for Donald Trump, but speaks about crime in apocalyptic terms that align with right-wing criticism of California, often likening Los Angeles to “Gotham City.” He accused Gascón of ushering in a “golden age of criminals.”

Gerald Marcil, a Republican megadonor who has poured millions into the recall campaigns of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Gascón, donated $250,000 to the committee supporting Hockman. The Hochman campaign also paid more than $100,000 to the Republican firm Pruvius Group, which organized Trump's fundraising efforts in 2020.

“My campaign combines bipartisan Democratic and Republican fundraisers, which reflects the independent approach I bring to the prosecutor's office. Criminals ask for political party registration when committing robbery. “We don't do that,” said Hochman, who estimates that half of the major donors are Democrats or independents.

Potential rivals have been quick to portray Hochman as incapable of beating Gascón one-on-one.

At a debate in January, the deputy director said: Atty. Eric Siddal noted Hochman's loss to Rob Bonta in the 2022 attorney general election. “There is no way on God's green earth that he could beat Georges Gascón in the general election,” Siddal said.

In 2020, after a summer of protests calling for criminal justice reform, Gascón became president with massive support from the National Democratic Party. But his first term was marked by legal battles with his own prosecutors, two failed recall bids, and controversial decisions that led opponents to accuse him of violent acts. . Some of his reform policies were blocked by judges early in his term.

Polls show voter anxiety about crime has soared, with some polls showing more than 50% of voters have a negative view of Gascón's job performance.

Political consultant Van Riper said such a low rating could amount to a political “death sentence” in the competition. “People don't usually change their minds about people they don't like,” he says.

Gascón ridiculed the vote results in a recent interview.

“During the 2020 election campaign, I had about 27% support. I got 54% of the vote,” he said. “The reality is that your vote on Election Day matters.”

The incumbent prosecutors said they were unable to engage voters in any substantive “policy discussion” beyond a promise to expunge his term in office.

Of the four members of Gascón's office participating in the election, Khatami may have the best chance of unseating his boss. A University of Southern California poll found Mr. Khatami came in second in the primary, receiving support from 8% of voters, compared to 15% for Mr. Gascón. Hochman came in third with 4%, and no other candidate received more than 2% support.

Mr. Khatami, one of only three candidates to raise more than $500,000 in the race, has become a thorn in the side of Gascón, frequently challenging prosecutors in public and on television. ing. A longtime crimes against children prosecutor, he is best known for winning convictions in the gruesome torture murders of Anthony Avalos and Gabriel Fernandez. He has built a base of crime victims who are dissatisfied with the city's leniency.

“Sometimes I think when you vote for a member of Congress, it's not just policy. I think people are looking for a leader,” he said. “I think people want someone to fight for them.”

Mr Khatami promised to govern “with all his heart” and to be flexible on some security issues. Mr. Khatami believes that most juveniles should not be tried as adults and rejects the idea that all defendants should be “prosecuted in a way that makes them harsh and stigmatizing.” It is the most severe punishment. ”

Mr. Khatami had been friends with conservative talk radio host Larry Elder and former Sheriff Alex Villanueva during the recall campaign against Mr. Gascón, which could alienate some general election voters.

“I don't run or hide from them,” Hatami said of those connections. “I've worked with a lot of people with whom I disagree politically.”

At a recent debate, when asked to rate L.A. County's safety on a scale of 1 to 10, Khatami answered “zero.”

Violent and property crimes in Los Angeles County increased by about 8% from 2019 to 2022, according to data from the California Department of Justice. Criminologists argue that it is disingenuous to attribute or credit criminal trends solely to district attorney policies. According to Los Angeles Police Department records, murders and robberies have been on the decline in recent years.

Chemerinsky hopes that nuance like this will be brought to the November vote. The former federal prosecutor, who is the most progressive of Gascón's top challengers and has the second-largest war chest after Mr. Hochman, is dissatisfied with the incumbent but will erase reforms he called for four years ago. He wants to win over Angelenos who are reluctant to make excessive revisions.

“I strongly believe in criminal justice reform,” he said. “I think there needs to be reform at every step of the process.”

Mr. Chemerinsky said he would rescind all of Mr. Gascon's original policies except for the ban on the death penalty. Like Mr. Khatami, he believes that “juveniles should be treated as juveniles” except in extreme cases, but Gascón's initial outright ban on trying some teenagers as adults is against it. (Gascon withdrew from absolutist policies toward youth in 2022.)

But Chemerinsky is more cautious about the use of sentencing enhancements in gang crimes. In an interview, he pointed to flaws in law enforcement databases that track gang members and said the use of such enhancements should be carefully considered.

“I think [gang enhancements] I have been abused in several ways. …Are we talking about actual gang-related acts and not gang-related individuals?'' he asked.

Such comments made Chemerinsky the target of attacks. Siddal has dubbed him a “mini-Gascon,” and other critics have pointed out that his father, legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, was part of Gascón's 2020 transition team. The elder Chemerinsky said he was not involved in Gascón's policy making.

Siddal, who is also running as a moderate but is struggling to match Chemerinskiy in fundraising, has labeled Hochman too far to the right and Chemerinskiy a successor to Gascón. Played the role of the race's attack dog.

Mr. Siddal, who claims to represent a “new generation of prosecutors,” rejects the death penalty and advocates against those he believes are the real promoters of violent crime: gang leaders and enforcers; He wants to refocus his office on prosecuting people who organize. Retail theft.

But he thinks others in the field are giving an unrealistic assessment of crime in Los Angeles.

“I think it's an exaggeration to say we live in Gotham,” he said. “The idea that we are at zero [safety level] That's irrational and doesn't work in reality. ”

With less than three weeks until the primary, the rest of the field is fighting for air, which tends to echo itself.

Archuleta and Deputy Chief. Atty. Both Maria Ramirez is struggling to raise funds. While Mr. Ramírez has positioned himself as a solid figure with extensive management experience who can restore confidence in the government, Mr. Archuleta has focused heavily on security concerns and ignored statistics showing a decline in crime.

Deputy Ward Atty. John McKinney is the longtime felony prosecutor who convicted Nipsey Hussle's killer in 2022, but he's not sure how his record of trial success stands in front of a field full of courtroom veterans. It is unclear whether it helps them stand out.

Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell, founder of the Skid Row Running Club, said he is uniquely qualified to help tackle Los Angeles' spiraling homelessness problem. Another judge, David Milton, frequently upholds the death penalty, proudly invoking the right Republican position in a county where the majority of registered voters are Democrats and independents.

Dan Kapelowitz, a lawyer running to Gascón's left, has called the rest of the field “mass incarcerators,” but he has spent the debates cracking jokes rather than offering policy solutions. I spend a lot of time talking.

The last person to join the campaign was a cold case prosecutor named Lloyd “Bobcat” Masson. He believes his focus on property crimes and his prime-time moniker will give him a boost with voters left stunned and confused by the protracted election. List of alternatives.

“Each candidate recognized that none of them were united, and they all thought they could do better for different reasons,” he said of the primary.

Masson seems confident despite being a total unknown in racing. But after 10 challengers threw their hats into the ring, he wondered why he should throw his hat too.

“If it’s a party, I’ll go,” he said.