Last Gasp of ‘Progressive DA’ Movement?

As Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón heads toward defeat, it’s time to assess what went wrong with this ideological approach to criminal justice reform.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The latest statewide polls show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in California by 22 percentage points in the presidential race, which can be expected given the state’s deep-blue politics. In 2020, Joe Biden beat Trump by 29 points. In Los Angeles County, where Democrats have an unfathomable 53 percent to 17 percent registration lead over Republicans, Biden trounced Trump by 45 points. Such lopsided vote totals in a 9.7-million population county (more populous than 40 states) explains much about California’s overall progressive tilt.

So pay careful attention to this shocking news: Nathan Hochman leads incumbent Democrat George Gascón by 30 points in the November race for district attorney, according to a poll by the University of California Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times. Sure, Hochman is running as an independent and even endorsed Harris, but he ran as a Republican for state attorney general and served as a George W. Bush–appointed federal prosecutor.

The reason, of course, is fear about the state’s crime wave and concerns about Gascón — a leading light in the progressive prosecutor movement — and his approach to public safety. As the Times reported, “Violent crime has jumped by about 8 percent from 2019 to 2023 in L.A. County, and property crime has climbed by 14 percent, according to California Department of Justice data.” It noted some recent violent crime drops in the city of Los Angeles, but residents are tired of the high-profile smash-and-grab robberies and eroding public order.

Gascón is actually an interesting and thoughtful person and less rigid than some of the other self-styled progressive prosecutors who have won DA races across the country, in cities ranging from Philadelphia to San Francisco. But he’s part of a movement with deep blind spots. In a nutshell, it sometimes promoted meaningful criminal justice reforms but focused too much on reducing jail populations and refuting public fear of crime, rather than ensuring community safety. It wound up giving second chances to people who didn’t deserve them.

“I recognize for many this is a new path … whether you are a protester, a police officer or a prosecutor, I ask you to walk with me. I ask you to join me on this journey,” he said during his 2020 swearing-in ceremony, per a Times report. “We can break the multigenerational cycles of violence, trauma and arrest and recidivism that has led America to incarcerate more people than any other nation.” Specific policies included ending cash bail, stopping prosecutors from seeking enhanced prison sentences, and refusing to prosecute minors as adults. But it didn’t work as planned.

Gascón immediately received blowback for his approach. Some of that was, as he claimed, the result of career prosecutors who resisted structural changes within the office. But some of his policies, such as refusing to send prosecutors to hearings to oppose parole for murderers who have served their minimum sentences, telegraphed a soft-on-crime message and was cruel to victims’ families. He backed away from this and some other controversial blanket policies (such as always opposing adult prosecutions of minors and always opposing the death penalty or life without parole), but the political damage had already been done.

In fact, the entire progressive prosecutor movement is unraveling in Western cities that are most hospitable to their ideas, noted a Politico article from May: “Progressive prosecutors are under siege all along the West Coast, as voters in deep-blue metro areas express their frustration with more lenient approaches to crime.” It pointed to tough-on-crime prosecutor Nathan Vasquez (also a registered independent), who won a landslide victory over progressive Mike Schmidt in Multnomah County, Oregon. That’s home to Portland, which is a progressive Nirvana.

Even residents of notoriously liberal cities have tired of the street crime, panhandling, homeless encampments, and unruly street scenes in downtown areas. In 2022, San Francisco’s voters recalled their district attorney, Chesa Boudin — one of the most avowedly left-wing prosecutors in this movement — by a 60 percent to 40 percent margin. Boudin and his supporters blamed right-wingers for his defeat, but that’s delusional in San Francisco. In the California Legislature, some prominent members have been dragged kicking and screaming to toughen sentencing for the worst offenders because of their tunnel-vision fear of “over-incarceration.”

This isn’t a good year to run as a progressive prosecutor in California. As I reported in my American Spectator column in July, Democrats delayed dealing with public crime concerns. After a group of businesses and district attorneys qualified an anti-crime measure (Proposition 36), Gov. Gavin Newsom and his allies in the Legislature approved a decent enough package of bills that would fix some of the problems caused by 2014’s Proposition 47, which reduced sentences for lower-level crimes.

But, as I noted, lawmakers included poison pills that would scuttle the legislative package if voters approved Proposition 36. After backing away from that cynical approach — designed to score political points rather than seriously address the crime issue — Newsom tried to qualify an alternative measure that would confuse voters. When competing measures clog the ballot, voters tend to vote no on everything. That effort failed and now Proposition 36 is soaring in the polls. In my view, Prop. 36 goes too far in the old direction, but progressives have only themselves to blame.

This most likely spells the end of the progressive prosecutor experiment. Most Americans no doubt support sensible criminal justice reforms. Even many conservatives have long called for a justice system that is financially responsible, more just, reins in prosecutorial and police abuses, ends corrupting police-state policies such as asset forfeiture, provides alternatives to prison for low-level crimes, embraces effective diversion programs, and so forth. I certainly agree that we should not return to the heavy-handed anti-crime policies of the 1990s.

But the public will only back such reforms if they feel safe. There’s no reason prosecutors can’t do two things at once — zealously fight against serious criminals and also look for meaningful reforms. Some California prosecutors, such as Orange County Republican Todd Spitzer, have sought out that middle ground. Perhaps after Hochman wins, we can build a new reform-minded consensus around that approach.