Buying the Los Angeles District Attorney

While there are still several hundred thousand votes yet to be counted, it appears that former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón has defeated incumbent Jackie Lacey in the race for Los Angeles County District Attorney.   Last year, Gascón resigned his post in San Francisco supposedly to take care of his mother in Los Angeles, then almost immediately announced he would challenge Lacey.  His record in San Francisco had been abysmal.  The city became the property crime capitol of America last year, and homicides increased dramatically under Gascón’s progressive anti-law enforcement leadership.  Even ultra-liberal SF Mayor London Breed endorsed Lacey.   Yet Gascón won the LA vote by a margin of 7.5%.  How did this happen?

Money made it happen.  In perhaps the most expensive District Attorney’s race in U.S. history, Gascón raised nearly $12.5 million…$5.4 million more than his opponent, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.  The largest contributions came from progressive hedge fund billionaire George Soros ($2.25 million) and ultra-liberal Netflix founder Reed Hastings and his wife ($2.15 million).  An additional million was contributed by group of progressive Bay Area multi-millionaires.  Virtually all of Lacey’s $7 million in support came from law enforcement groups.  Was Lacey a bad District Attorney?  No.  She was a career prosecutor who worked her way up by doing her job of prosecuting criminals.  But she wasn’t progressive enough, which made her the target of an aggressive campaign on Gascón’s behalf by the Soros-supported group Black Lives Matter, which even staged late night protests at Lacey’s home.   As the largest District Attorneys Office in the U.S., the LADA was a big prize for Soros, who has spent millions in recent years to bankroll campaigns putting progressive pro-defendant District Attorneys in Philadelphia,  Chicago, San Francisco, and Orange-Osceola Florida among others.  Soros doesn’t live in any of these places, so the policies of the prosecution offices he has purchased don’t effect him.  The public pays for this in increased crime and violence, drug abuse, robbery and theft in the counties where Soros has bought the DA.