In 2020, George Gascón unseated Jackie Lacey, ending the most expensive district attorney race in Los Angeles County history.

Four years later, money is starting to flow again, but not to Gascon.

The city of Gascon raised $13 million in 2020, more than half of which came from a committee formed by wealthy Bay Area residents who worked to support criminal justice reform after the killing of George Floyd. It is something. Lacey had $7 million in stockpiles, and 72 percent of that money came from the police union’s political committee.

These law enforcement advocates returned in 2024 to back Gascón’s challenger, former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman. But the source of progressive funding that fueled Gascón’s 2020 candidacy has dried up just when he needed it most in his faltering re-election bid.

As of Oct. 14, Mr. Hochman and outside groups supporting him had raised nearly $10.4 million in campaign contributions, while Mr. Gascón and his outside supporters had raised nearly $1.2 million, according to a Times analysis. It’s dollars.

With vast financial advantages, Hochman, under Gascón’s watch, was able to launch a media blitz depicting Los Angeles as a crumbling, crime-infested dystopia. Recent polls show Hochman leading by up to 30 percentage points among voters.

Mr. Hochman spent more than $1.1 million on television airtime and ad production, and an outside committee supporting his challengers spent nearly $1.9 million on digital ads running on streaming platforms such as Hulu. The campaign’s ads feature testimonies from crime victims and prosecutors expressing disdain for current “restorative justice” policies.

Hochman’s biggest outside supporter is the law enforcement union, but he’s also garnered support from the business community and real estate companies. Billionaire Rick Caruso, a former mayoral candidate and Los Angeles mall mogul, donated $250,000 to Hochman through his political action committee. The candidate said Gascón’s policies, including not prosecuting misdemeanor drug possession and trespassing charges, are “killing” store owners and other retailers.

“It creates an unsustainable course of action, and the business community has to ask, how can you continue to do business if you can’t protect the safety of your tenants, your tenants, your customers? How can you continue to do business if you can’t even protect yourself? We’re wondering, ‘Are we going to continue?’Keep us safe,”’ Hochman said.

Gascón spends no money on TV ads, focusing instead on mail delivery, which is easily lost in the deluge of campaign flyers that clog Angelenos’ mailboxes every election season. Still, Hochman still outspends the incumbent 11-to-1 on such campaign materials.

Some experts believe donors abandoned Gascón after he did poorly in the primary, finishing first but receiving just 25% of the county vote.

“These are sophisticated donors, and they’re not only looking at the polls of this campaign, but they’re also looking at what happened to Chesa Boudin in San Francisco,” he said in Los Angeles. Roy Baer, ​​a longtime Democratic campaign consultant, said, referring to the recall. Gascon’s progressive successor. “They look at all this information and say this is a lost cause.”

Of Gascón’s 10 largest outside donors in 2020, only four gave money to committees supporting his re-election campaign this year. Liberal philanthropist George Soros poured $2.45 million into Gascón’s candidacy in 2020, but has offered nothing to the incumbent this term.

Records show Soros spent $3.7 million on federal elections this year, about a third of what he spent in 2020, with much of it going to Vice President Kamala Harris’ Victory Fund and Donated to the Democratic National Committee. He has contributed to only one California candidate this term.

Soros spokesman Michael Vachon said in a statement that Soros’s “focus this term is on the presidential race.”

“This reflects the unprecedented crisis facing the nation and could be misconstrued as an abandonment of District Attorney Gascón and other local leaders who champion a wise, effective and humane approach to public safety.” You shouldn’t,” Vachon said.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his wife, philanthropist Patti Quillin, spent a combined $2.2 million supporting Gascon in 2020, but this year they donated just $9,000. M. Quinn Delaney, founder of an Oakland-based advocacy group fighting for racial justice, has spent $109,000 to boost Gascón this term, making her his second has become a major donor. But that’s less than a fifth of the $553,000 she spent in 2020.

Emails sent to representatives for Mr. Delaney, Mr. Hastings and Mr. Quillin were not returned.

Recent polls show that voters are deeply concerned about public safety, and four years ago, when many voters were marching in the streets demanding police accountability, tough measures like Prop. 36 Supports anti-crime measures.

“Georges Gascón hasn’t changed at all in the last four years, but the world around him has changed dramatically, and he’s either not been able to adapt to that change, or he’s trying to.” Republican Politics said Dan Schnur, a former adviser to the house. Lives in California. She teaches political communication at USC.

Gascón said direct fundraising is progressing at a similar pace to 2020. But money supporting Gascón is pouring in from independent committees — political action committees and organizations that can raise far more money from individual donors than candidate-controlled committees. That’s because you don’t have to abide by donation limits unless you coordinate with the candidate.

The district attorney also believes he has been hurt by attacks from Republicans on the national stage, noting that former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have brought up his name on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, the race has not attracted the attention of national Democrats as it did in 2020, when Harris and others endorsed Gascón.

Insha Rahman, deputy director of advocacy and partnerships at the Vera Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for criminal justice reform, said the disappearance of Gascón’s campaign funds is part of a broader national trend.

Rahman pointed to a study by Bridgespan Group of philanthropic dollars spent each year on criminal justice reform, including nonprofits, policy campaigns, and political campaigns, which totaled approximately $416 million in 2019. It reached its peak in 2022 and fell to $207 million. Year captured in research.

“Democrats this season are sort of stocking up on dry gunpowder for the presidential election or trying to figure out how close the Senate race is,” Rahman said.

Hochman, on the other hand, is tapping into many of the same funding sources that Lacey did in 2020. Nearly a quarter of the total, $2.5 million in direct donations and outside committees, came from police unions that have long served as Gascón’s foils. His other major outside contributors include Republican megadonor Gerald Marcil, a supporter of Gascón and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s failed recall effort. Real estate brokers, investors, developers, and property managers are also big supporters, with $2.4 million coming in from donors in these industries.

Mr. Gascon used the donations to paint Mr. Hochman as a wealthy defender of conservative ideas and corrupt law enforcement, working for convicted former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and other “tax evaders.” He pointed out his time as a defense attorney.

Mr. Hoffman, who is running as an independent, has largely avoided partisan politics in the campaign, other than to fend off criticism from Mr. Gascón, and has focused most of his advertising dollars on public safety.

In one ad, Hockman stands in front of a homeless encampment on Spring Street.

“Homelessness is exploding throughout downtown and throughout the county as a direct result of the failed social experiment that Gascón has put in place,” Hochman told the camera while standing just a block from the prosecutor’s office. I spoke to him.

The number of homeless people has decreased slightly in Los Angeles County this year, with a 2.2% decrease in the city compared to 2023, according to a study conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. The number of people Hochman mentioned who are unsheltered or living outdoors is declining at an even higher rate.

Criminal justice experts say it’s difficult to draw a direct line between the DA’s office’s policies and homelessness. But Behr, the political consultant, said that because “voters don’t know the data,” they are unlikely to fact-check ads placed on social media or television.

Gascon, on the other hand, doesn’t have any money to start a side show.