Mary Klein slathered sunscreen on her face as she waited for the candidate she hopes will defeat Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón in November. A survivor of a random attack along a Venice canal, Klein joined other crime victims chasing a little shade in a muggy downtown Los Angeles courtyard to talk about what is expected to be California's most competitive race.

“People should vote to protect their families,” Klein said. “Safety is the most important issue for every family, every person, especially women and children. We are threatened every day.”

Klein's April 9 attack was brutal and, in the case of his second victim, 53-year-old Sarah Alden, fatal. The rape and beating of two women by a homeless man in a seaside community appeared to confirm many residents' worst fears about increasing lawlessness.

(The Times does not typically identify victims of sexual assault, but Klein, 55, has spoken publicly about what happened.)

Gascón's opponent, Nathan Hochman, is little known — a situation that Klein and others hoped to change when they agreed to negotiate with him in front of television cameras late last month. They were joined by a familiar figure in local political circles, shopping-mall billionaire Rick Caruso, who recently voiced his support for the lawyer and former federal prosecutor.

For Klein and some voters, anyone is better than Gascón, whose progressive policies are far less popular now than when he came to power on a wave of reform in 2020, and many in some areas feel crime is out of control, even though statistics suggest otherwise.

Gascón received just 25% of the vote in the March primary, a weak showing for an incumbent, and a June poll by Impact Research showed he has more than 50% disapproval among likely voters.

After a recall attempt, more than a dozen lawsuits from within his office and a vote of no confidence from the county's deputy district attorneys' association, the man known as the godfather of progressive prosecutors faces a serious challenge in the general election.

With her radiant, crooked smile and her jaw now held together by screws and plates, Klein bore the burden of her own suffering to Hochman. She sought out the candidate, she said, trusting Hochman would offer a sympathetic ear.

“I support Nathan because I think he has a very good understanding of how crime affects ordinary people every day,” she said.

But who is Hochman? Is he, as his opponents charge, cynically exploiting a conservative crime panic for political gain? Or does he have the experience, activism and vision to defeat one of America's most admired progressive prosecutors?

Both supporters and opponents of Hochman say the lawyer has just a few weeks left to transform himself from someone who is just not Gascón into someone more tangible.

“The summer is when the narrative solidifies,” said Jamala Hayner, Gascón's chief strategist. “After Labor Day, turnout really matters.”

Hochman said his “hard-center” anti-crime philosophy would help him win over the silent majority of moderates. Speaking to Klein and other victims who had come to support him, Hochman declared that his opponent “has implemented an extreme pro-criminal, anti-victim policy on his first day in office.”

“The result, sadly, has been a near-endless string of tragedies in this county over the last three and a half years,” he said.

Hochman is running as an independent, but ran for a state House seat as a Republican two years ago and has previously worked with fundraisers who helped raise money for President Trump's 2020 campaign.

Kristin Soto DeBerry of the California Prosecutors Alliance, a progressive advocacy group, said Hochman “is the conservative choice, so Republicans, law enforcement dollars and those interests rallied around him.”

Turnout in November will certainly be higher than in March and will likely be meaningfully different. A July analysis of statewide voting patterns by a nonpartisan poll found: Public Policy Institute of California The primary election showed that older voters and Republicans were over-represented in the polls.

“I think that as awareness of the crime that's happening increases, people are going to turn out to vote,” said Caruso, who also targeted similar voters with a similar narrative of a dystopian Gotham plagued by crime and mayhem, but lost the 2022 mayoral election by nearly 10 points.

“It's not 'anyone but George.'

Hochman grew up in Beverly Hills and lives in Brentwood, and according to his wife, Vivienne Vella, “can come across as very formal at times, and she'll always say, 'Take off your tie!' or 'Take off your jacket!' We came from very different upbringings.”

The son of a lawyer and a local philanthropist, Hochman starred on the Beverly Hills High School tennis team and was varsity in his high school class before earning his bachelor's degree from Brown University and his law degree from Stanford University.

“I really haven't changed much,” the candidate said of her younger years. “I was, um, um…”

“Nerd?” Bella asked during a recent interview at a Starbucks near her home.

“Thanks, nerd,” Hochman replied.

After law school, he clerked for a district judge and then became an assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, alongside future Congressman and now Senate candidate Adam B. Schiff.

Hochman worked in the tax division of President George W. Bush's Justice Department while his three children were young, and later served on the Los Angeles Ethics Commission while continuing his private practice as an attorney.

“I think Nathan has a lot of core,” said former Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich. “You don't need a bad reputation to be a good person. You need common sense, the ability to discern right from wrong and the strength to stand up for your beliefs.”

Vela was raised in Camarillo by a single father and came from a noticeably more modest background than her husband, which helped endear the couple to Gascón's longtime opponent, Jonathan Hatami, who came in third in a historically close primary. Hatami, who has since endorsed Hochman, said he and his wife met with the candidate in Santa Clarita this spring.

“Some people are a little wary of me,” Hatami said, “so I invited Nathan over. I needed to get to know him more personally.”

“They probably need to see him a few more times,” Khatami said of voters.

Hoping to get voters to look beyond his polished appearance, Hochman crisscrossed the county, meeting with residents, elected officials and dozens of deputy district attorneys.

“Everybody has a public face and a private face,” said William W. Carter, a former federal prosecutor who worked with Mr. Hochman. “He's very funny, intelligent and engaging, but he's also very serious, especially when he's focused on a particular case or issue.”

Hochman's attention to the concerns of rank-and-file prosecutors helped him win the support of not only Khatami but also former primary opponents, including Deputy District Attorneys Maria Ramirez and John McKinney.

“It's not, 'Anyone but George,' I support Hochman,” said Shaleen Nizami, one of about 30 assistant district attorneys who met with the candidates at a June event in North Hollywood. “He has an actual plan to deal with victims and doesn't seem to be just pushing an agenda.”

Hochman seems more comfortable around his fellow prosecutors than he does on other campaign rallies, where he routinely repeats the same topics and jokes.

He has vowed to roll back his opponent's most controversial reforms, including special directives that are deeply unpopular among prosecutors. Among Gascón's initiatives on his first day in office was a near-total ban on sentencing enhancements for gang affiliation and gun possession.

Recalling lessons he learned from his former client, disgraced former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who was convicted in 2017 of obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI, Hochman promised to return “competent, experienced” insiders to positions of power within the sprawling office, one of the nation's largest.

“Lee Baca taught me that when leaders delegate authority, they should find the best people to delegate to and then provide proper oversight,” the lawyer said. “Baca did not do that.”

In his view, neither does Mr. Gascón, whose top brass has been dogged by scandals and accusations of nepotism.

Still, Hochman's stiff demeanor can sometimes give the impression that he's hiding something.

Since launching his DA bid, he has said little about his unsuccessful challenge to Rob Bonta for California attorney general two years ago, an experience that is both his greatest asset and his biggest political liability.

The campaign catapulted Hochman into the district attorney race with an enormous amount of money and an unmatched statewide donor base.

But it also left him with what some see as a blemish on Los Angeles politics: He was a registered Republican.

Schwarzenegger Republican in the Trump Era

Hochman has been running for nonpartisan office as an independent since at least April last year, and while his donors and supporters span the political spectrum, his past party affiliations could be a dividing factor among the country's most liberal voters.

This is even more true this year as Trump once again leads the Republican field.

President Trump's rhetoric has shaped the national debate about crime, leading many to believe the country is becoming less safe, despite data in many places showing the opposite.

“It's a scary time to be living in Los Angeles,” Gascón strategist Hayner acknowledged. “What happened to you, whether it's perception or reality, is real and so are your feelings about it.”

That has left Hochman defining himself against Trump (for whom he has said he has never voted) and a party that has long been remade in the former president's far-right populist image.

“When Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor in 2003, I became a moderate Republican like him,” Hochman said. “I thought, if that's the direction the California Republican Party was going in, that's the direction I wanted to go.”

But even the movie star and former governor, the last Republican elected to California's governorship in 2011, broke with the party and denounced Trump.

Hochman has done little to publicly distance himself from the controversial former president, yet the DA candidate and his allies have been quick to vent their frustrations about claims that he is a closet conservative or that his deregulation would mean a return to the overpolicing and mass incarceration of the 1990s.

“People are tired of this ideology,” Caruso said. “The question is: Are you safe or are you not safe?”

Klein echoed his words.

“Our district attorneys need to consider that their number one job is to protect the public,” she said during the event with Hochman. “The reason I'm here is because we're not protecting the public.”