Los Angeles: progressive challenger ousts top prosecutor Jackie Lacey

Jackie Lacey, the Los Angeles district attorney, was ousted by her progressive challenger in one of the most closely watched criminal justice races in the US this year.

George Gascón, the former police chief and district attorney of San Francisco, won the race to lead the Los Angeles prosecutors’ office with more than 53% of the vote, as of Friday morning. Black Lives Matter LA and other activist groups played a major role in the heated contest, having protested against Lacey’s policies for years.

A tearful Lacey conceded the race on Friday, saying that while 791,000 ballots remained to be counted in Los Angeles county, her consultants advised her that she would not be able to close the gap enough to claim victory. She suggested that unprecedented amounts of money poured into the race contributed to her defeat, as well as the nationwide protests that erupted over the summer following the high-profile police killings of Black civilians.

“The circumstances surrounding the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery gave breath to an in-progress discussion around racism, policing and criminal justice reform,” she said. “These incidents were painful and exposed an issue that existed in this country for years: racism. Our nation is going through a reckoning and what happened in my election may one day be listed as a consequence of that. It may be said that the results of this election may be the result of our season of discontent and our demand to see a tsunami of change.”

Lacey was the first woman and first African American to serve as the Los Angeles DA. In her second term, Lacey faced intensifying scrutiny over her refusal to prosecute police officers who kill, her close ties with law enforcement unions and her continued use of the death penalty.

Gascón, who was endorsed by political heavyweights such as Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders, is part of a wave of liberal, reform-minded DA candidates across the US who have pledged to undo some of the harms and racial inequities of policing and prisons.

Related: How Black Lives Matter reshaped the race for Los Angeles’ top prosecutor

BLM and other activist groups have increasingly put pressure on elected district attorneys, who are some of the most influential and least accountable players in the US criminal justice system.

Los Angeles’ prosecutorial office is the largest local prosecutor’s office in the country. The Los Angeles DA’s office oversees 1,000 lawyers, funnels defendants into the world’s largest jail system and reviews police violence cases in a county that has some of the highest number of police killings in the nation. LA prosecutors are also responsible for investigating misconduct in the LA sheriff’s department, which has been plagued by recent scandals, including controversial killings and alleged gangs of deputies engaged in criminal behavior.

Gascón gained traction and celebrity support amid national protests against police killings and racial inequality following the death of George Floyd in May. He has pledged to hold police accountable for brutality, promising to reopen specific cases of killings by police that Lacey had previously cleared.

“When I entered this race, this movement for reform and this campaign were considered by many to be a long shot in the largest county in the nation against a two-term incumbent DA,” Gascón said. “But we’re here. We did it. And I stand here before you committed to making lasting changes.”

In an interview with the Guardian last month, Gascón said he would stop using a number of “tough-on-crime” laws that have contributed to mass incarceration and California’s prison overcrowding crisis: “We can see incarceration and safety are not necessarily synonymous, and the fact that this is becoming more obvious to many, it’s very, very energizing to me.”

As DA, he said he would not fight to keep people in prison when they are up for parole, not transfer teens to adult court, won’t pursue the death penalty and won’t use “gang enhancements”, which have long been used in racially discriminatory ways.

Lacey disappointed progressive groups during her tenure, including by sending 23 people to death row, more than any other county in the US in recent years. All but one sentenced to death were people of color. Despite hundreds of killings by police, she only brought charges in one case.

Gascón also faced progressive protests when he was San Francisco DA, stemming from his refusal to prosecute police in a number of high-profile killings. Melina Abdullah, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter LA, who has long rallied against Lacey, noted that she would probably end up protesting Gascón, too, once he is DA, given the nature of the prosecutor’s office.

Gascón’s victory comes amid a nationwide push to elect more progressive district attorneys and reform the criminal justice system through prosecutors. Gascón himself was part of that push, as a founding member of the Prosecutors Alliance of California. “We are thrilled to see one of our founding members take on the leadership of the nation’s largest prosecutor’s office,” the organization tweeted.

“We have been thrilled at the level of local and national attention on this race, which both encouraged and reflected a heightened public awareness of both the power and discretion that a DA has,” said Molly Greene, a District Attorney Accountability Coalition steering committee member, in a statement. “Now that the race has been resolved, we intend to make sure that this awareness translates into accountability.”