Nathan Hochman plans to clean house in LA after crashing George Gascón in a landslide

It is morning again in the City of Angels.

Nathan Hochman, an assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, unseated Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón in a landslide victory last week.

Hochman, who ran as an independent, received 61% of the vote to a tepid 39% for the far-left Democratic attorney general elected in 2020. The Ross LLP attorney, an expert in criminal and tax law, will take office Dec. 2. .

It’s a quick comeback for the would-be hometown hero, who graduated from Beverly Hills High School and received his law degree from Stanford.

He ran as a Republican in 2022 for California Attorney General, losing to Democrat Rob Bonta. But trouble in the liberal paradise gave him a new opening.

“People don’t agree on much today, but they all agree that security, first and foremost, is what they expect from their government,” he told The Post in an interview.

Gascón survived two impeachment attempts — but not a challenge from the former federal prosecutor and president of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.

A spike in crime—along with opposition from the prosecutors’ union—fueled Gascón’s removal.

A Los Angeles Police Department report in March showed a nearly 3% increase in violent crime and a staggering 9.5% increase in robberies year over year.

Hochman’s victory came as state voters also passed Proposition 36 — which overturns laws Gascón bragged he helped write and upgraded certain felonies to misdemeanors, including some theft and drug-related offenses.

Hochman told The Post that the proposal’s overwhelming support — 70% — will make his job easier when he takes office next month.

“By the third conviction, what used to be misdemeanors can now become a felony,” he said.

“The court could order someone to go to state prison or sentence them to state prison. The same in the drug use area. If you use serious drugs like meth, heroin, fentanyl, the third sentence can now be a mandatory treatment option. The fourth sentence can be state prison. And with fentanyl poisonings — and I use that word intentionally — it provides additional tools to really increase the penalties and the resources to go after fentanyl poisonings.”

On day one, the DA-elect said, he will take a “hard middle ground” approach and quickly get rid of restrictions imposed by Gascón. He said that harms victims and hinders prosecutors’ abilities to do their jobs under the outgoing district attorney.

“There are general policies that say the DA’s office does not prosecute juveniles, anyone under the age of 18, for offenses that include misdemeanor theft, which is stealing just under $950. We want to lift that prohibition,” the prosecutor said.

He quits too the prohibition against adding gang and weapons-enhancing felony charges and other Gascón injunctions.

“That prosecutor’s office had a ban on prosecutors going with victim’s families for parole when they confront the killer of their son or their daughter or their parent,” he said.

“For decades, prosecutors used to go with victims’ families because they get access to the parole board’s information and can make the best arguments on behalf of the victims’ families. I will remove the ban that Gascón imposed on his first day to allow prosecutors to once again be champions for victims in the system.”

Hochman also told The Post that he hopes to make his office a critical community partner in tackling the region’s homelessness crisis. More than 75,000 people in Los Angeles are considered homeless this year per county data.

“Law enforcement, when they go into homeless areas, they’re basically telling anyone who wonders why they’re not doing their job — that the DA has our hands tied,” Hochman said.

“So I want to untie the hands of law enforcement to actually do their job. But again, the ultimate approach is not to see if we can fill the prisons to capacity — that is, if anything, the failure of the criminal justice system. The approach is if we can deter this criminal behavior in the first place.

Nearly 10 million people call LA County home; it is the country’s most populous.

But the county, like California, still struggles with residents leaving the state in droves and a major public perception crisis when it comes to crime.

Hochman’s election may mark a turning point.

“The crime is illegal again,” cheered Shea Sanna, a deputy DA whose retaliation case against his outgoing boss is one of more than 20 from office whistleblowers.

Sanna worked on one of Gascón’s most criticized cases, protesting the DA’s decision to prosecute James “Hannah” Tubbs, 26 at the time, as a juvenile for molesting a 10-year-old girl.

Tubbs, who was later convicted of killing a friend over $100, was sentenced to just two years in a youth treatment center – despite already having spent time in an adult prison.

“Hochman’s focus will be to protect law-abiding citizens, not murderers and rapists,” Sanna told Fox News Digital.

If the new DA’s crime reduction strategies work, the City of Angels could become more angelic again.