A second attempt to recall Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón is officially under way, as the L.A. County Registrar’s Office approved a recall petition on Thursday that will allow organizers to gather signatures to force an election.
Gascón was elected in 2020 with millions of dollars in backing from left-wing billionaire George Soros, who has funded the campaigns of left-wing prosecutors across the country. He defeated incumbent Jackie Lacey, who was the first black woman to hold the office and who was targeted by Black Lives Matter protesters.
A first recall attempt began early last year, almost immediately after Gascón took office and began enacting radical left-wing reforms, such as eliminating most sentence enhancements and blocking line prosecutors from seeking the death penalty.
However, that effort fizzled, though organizers have vowed to succeed this time. They have an updated website and growing support from elected officials, including L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, and the Beverly Hills City Council, which voted unanimously to back the recall.
The Los Angeles Times reported Friday:
The county’s Registrar’s Office approved the new recall petition Thursday that requires organizers to gather signatures of support from 10% of the county’s registered voters — a little more than 560,000 people — by July 6. Organizers halted their first recall attempt last fall after they were unable to gather the necessary signatures by the end of October.
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[R]ecall organizers contend that Gascon’s policies favor defendants and have contributed to a rise in crime. His critics include L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, law enforcement officers, some prosecutors and victims’ rights groups.
“We are sick and tired of living in the pro-criminal paradise Gascón has created,” recall organizers Desiree Andrade and Tania Owen said in a statement. “Gascón turned his back on us, and now his policies are destroying Los Angeles County right before our eyes and needlessly creating more innocent victims.
Los Angeles is suffering a rise in many kinds of violent crime, including homicides, as Los Angeles Magazine recently noted: “The city last year experienced 397 murders, up 11.8 percent from the 355 the previous year, and a 53.9 percent increase from the 258 in the pre-pandemic year of 2019. It was the highest figure since the 395 killings in 2007.”
Gascon took office in December 2020, after a year when L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti cut funding to police under pressure from Black Lives Matter. Garcetti withdrew his endorsement of Lacey to back Gascón.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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