Los Angeles residents could be forgiven for feeling that they’d taken a wrong turn some time ago on the question of who should direct criminal prosecutions in the nation’s largest county — and what ideas and policies should drive them.

Not long ago, the important work of prosecuting crime was in the hands of moderate, sober leaders. Steve Cooley ran a measured office, prosecuting cases but also pushing back against sentencing abominations such as California’s dumb Three Strikes law, a criminal justice approach that borrows its essence from the rules of baseball. Cooley, a Republican, was no softie on crime, but he recognized that Three Strikes imposed unconscionably long sentences in some cases, and his opposition helped force its reform.

Cooley was succeeded by another balanced prosecutor, Jackie Lacey, a Democrat who brought both insistence on punishment and practicality to the job of managing the largest district attorney’s office in the U.S.

How, then, is it that Los Angeles now faces a choice between two dramatically less capable candidates than those who preceded them?

Perhaps it is just the nature of this moment in American politics, when common sense has gone the way of compromise and middle ground — ideas that have served countries and communities well, only to be outpaced by extremism, opportunism and bullheadedness.

The election for Los Angeles district attorney next week pits two candidate who define much of what is wrong with contemporary politics and criminal justice, leaving Los Angeles voters with a distressing choice between an incumbent who has mismanaged his office and an opportunist who’s running for this job only because he lost his bid for state attorney general two years ago, when it suited him to be a Republican.

These aren’t choices anyone wants for a position that wields enormous authority over those caught in the criminal justice system — and that influences prosecution across the country.

Underwhelming candidates

George Gascón is the incumbent, a position he holds because he defeated Lacey in 2020. In that race, Gascón was the darling of liberals who saw him as a bellwether of progressive prosecutors. That somehow made Lacey seem like an old-school, law-and-order DA, a strange position for a moderate Black woman — a trailblazer on both fronts, in fact, for that office.

Still, Gascón outmaneuvered to Lacey’s left, and a very liberal electorate picked him.

In one sense, he delivered. Gascón had barely been in office before firing off a series of directives to the staff he inherited: He prohibited prosecutors from seeking the death penalty, ended the practice of charging children as adults and barred prosecutors from seeking sentencing enhancements that tack on extra jail time — for being involved in a gang, among other things. He also promised to scrutinize police misconduct and eliminate cash bail.

Each of those ideas has merit, but Gascón’s management-by-fiat put him at odds with his new office before he’d had a chance to size the place up. Prosecutors understandably rebelled at his arrogance and aloofness, his insistence that he knew better than them on how to manage a staff he’d just taken over.

It would be an overstatement to say he lost the support of his office. He never had it to begin with.

That set a tone for failure, and Gascón has amply lived down to it. His approval ratings have been abysmal from the beginning, and he has shed his early liberal support, as backers moved away from him and his out-of-touch leadership.

That drew a couple failed attempts at recalling him from office and spurred a big field to oppose him, but the candidate who emerged at the top of that heap is hardly better.

Nathan Hochman was a Republican two years ago when he ran for California attorney general of California. Today, he touts his “independence,” but he’s also glib, vague and histrionic. As a candidate, Hochman has blamed Gascón for creating a “golden age of criminals,” and rated Los Angeles safety on a “scale of 1 to 10,” at zero.

Those are absurd answers from an unserious person guided by ambition rather than a genuine desire to make this community safe. When it comes to what his policies would be, Hochman mostly offers platitudes. “I will instruct my deputies to prosecute ‘smash-and-grab’ robbers to the full extent of the law,” he asserts, as if that actually meant something.

His only real promise is to do the opposite of whatever Gascón has done.

Two political negatives

As the campaign winds down, Hochman enjoys a substantial advantage in the polls, and Gascón’s negatives are stubbornly persistent. Bill Carrick, a thoughtful, longtime political consultant, said that when he tested the incumbent in polls months ago, Gascón remained mired in the 40% range no matter how hard he worked the samples (at the time, Carrick was working with Jeff Chemerinsky, a DA candidate who failed to make the runoff).

Still, the final stretch pits two competing political negatives against each other. Gascón is disliked personally, leaving him without important allies, whereas Hochman is disliked philosophically, equally depriving him of prominent support as well. Gascón is a more natural fit for the electorate, especially since turnout for a presidential election is likely to be large and liberal. But Hochman also has more money and better ads.

In the pursuit of an advantage, each has eked out support from unhelpful backers. Lacey is supporting Hochman, but she’s still mad at Gascón for beating her last time. Rick Caruso, who lost his mayoral bid two years ago, supports Hochman, but Karen Bass, who won hers, is taking a pass. The Los Angeles Daily News supports Hochman, but nobody really takes the Daily News seriously. The Los Angeles Times supports Gascón and argues that Hochman’s policies represent a “throwback approach,” but The Times has not covered itself in glory over a notable non-endorsement, so its influence may not add up to much, either.

That leaves voters with the uncomfortable task of choosing between an incumbent who espouses thoughtful policies but implements them poorly and a challenger who espouses few policies at all, cries wolf about crime and adjusts his makeup to suit his interests.

Oh, for the days of Steve Cooley.