The Brief

This is an excerpt from Make It Make Sense, our pop-up newsletter on the 2024 election. If you want weekly updates through September on following the money this election season, sign up here.

Millions of dollars have been raised in this year’s race for Los Angeles County district attorney — but so far, the vast majority of it has been gathered in support of just one of the candidates.

Nathan Hochman, the criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor who is challenging incumbent George Gascón for the seat, has raised nearly $3.9 million for his campaign as of Sept. 16. That’s over five times more than Gascón, whose fundraising stands at around $678,000.

Independent groups — those that aren’t affiliated with an official campaign — have spent $1.8 million to support Hochman. So far, there’s been no independent spending to support Gascón.

We’ll break down how we found these numbers and what they actually tell us. But first, let’s back up.

Why is the district attorney’s race such a big deal?

Voters are choosing between two competing visions of criminal justice in L.A. County.

Gascón was elected district attorney in 2020 on his promises to work toward ending decades of mass incarceration and create a fairer criminal justice system. Since taking office, he’s stopped prosecuting many misdemeanors and seeking sentencing enhancements for other crimes.

But increases in property crime and viral videos of smash-and-grab-style robberies have made public safety a major talking point of this election. Recent polling shows that public support for Gascón’s approach has waned — not just in L.A. County, but also in other cities that elected similarly progressive district attorneys.

Hochman has vowed to reverse some of Gascón’s policies. The November election will be a test of whether L.A. voters want that, too.

Now, let’s take a look at the money. Because this is an L.A. County office, all the campaign finance information can be found on the L.A. County registrar’s website.

How much money has each candidate raised?

What we found: We added up the data for Gascón and Hochman going back to 2023, when they first started raising money for their respective campaigns. As of Sept. 16, Gascón raised a total of $678,784. Hochman raised $3,854,313. 

What this tells you: These funds — which can be found by searching both candidates’ records here and here — are the engines that keep campaigns going. They pay staff, they buy ads, they cover travel expenses, and a lot more. The sheer amount of money raised isn’t all that matters, but the more funding a candidate has, the more ability they have to get their name and message in front of voters. 

In 2020, when Gascón first ran for L.A. County district attorney against incumbent Jackie Lacey, the gap between funding totals was not so wide. Back then, Gascón raised about $1.3 million against Lacey’s $1.6 million.

How much money came from inside vs. outside LA County?

What the numbers tell you: This race could influence elections in other counties that face similar tensions over public safety and criminal justice, so it’s likely attracting money from outside L.A County. These numbers can help you gauge how much outside interest there is in a race and to what degree it’s powering the campaigns. It can also hint at what a candidate’s local support looks like.

What we found: Taking a look here and here, and extracting L.A. County ZIP codes from the data, we see that as of Sept. 10, about $381,000 of Gascón’s funds — or 57% of his total — came from L.A. County. Of the rest of Gascón’s money, about 23% of his total funds came from Bay Area counties and another 8% came from outside California.

For Hochman, the amount raised from within L.A. County was about $3.2 million, or 83% of his total funds. 

(Other counties in northern, southern and central California make up the rest of the totals for each candidate, along with contributions that didn't include a ZIP code.)

Where is independent spending coming from?

What this tells you: Who’s willing to spend big to back a candidate? Money raised by candidates comes with restrictions — a maximum of $9,000 per donor for this particular race. But there are no contribution limits for independent groups that want to support or oppose a candidate, as long as they’re not affiliated with an official campaign. 

What we found: When we took a closer look at independent spending (by looking here and here and filtering for independent committee spending in the 2024 elections), a few things stuck out:

• Two independent committees spent a combined $469,000 to oppose Gascón: 
  
  • Working Families, First Responders, and Small Businesses for a Safer L.A. County Supporting Hochman for District Attorney 2024 sponsored by Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs
  • Local Residents, Small Businesses and Public Safety Professionals for Safer and Cleaner Neighborhoods Opposing Nithya Raman for City Council 2024, Sponsored by the Los Angeles Police Protective League 
• Two independent committees spent more than $1.8 million combined to support Hochman — Los Angeles County Deserves Better, Primarily Formed to Support Nathan Hochman for District Attorney 2024 spent more than $846,000, and the Working Families, First Responders and Small Businesses committee spent more than $970,000.
• So far, no independent money has been spent to support Gascón in this election cycle (although one group had raised $200,000 to support him as of last week).  

Will this spending influence voters?

What this tells you: The data we’ve been looking at so far tell us how much financial power these campaigns have and who’s fueling it. You can also think of campaign contributions as quiet endorsements for candidates. Someone may not be putting up a lawn sign, for example, but they are writing a check to support a candidate. If their opinion matters to you, it can help you decide your own vote.

What we found: 

• The L.A. Police Protective League and Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs sponsored committees that spent a combined $366,000 to oppose Gascón.
• Other big spenders supporting Hochman include Rick Caruso, a former L.A. mayoral candidate and billionaire developer (who contributed $250,000 to an independent committee supporting Hochman), businessman Alex Von Fürstenberg, son of fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg (he donated $9,000 to the campaign and $30,000 in independent spending), and Jerry Greenberg, Sushi Nozawa’s CEO (who donated a combined $125,000 across two independent committees). 
• Hochman’s supporters include people from real estate, corporate law and law enforcement groups, while Gascón’s backers include multiple labor unions. 
• Among Gascón’s recognizable supporters: actor Jane Fonda (who donated $1,000), musician John Legend (who donated $5,000) and Gil Garcetti, former L.A. district attorney (who donated $500). 

What’s the takeaway? 

It’s clear that Hochman’s campaign has a large advantage over Gascón’s so far when focusing on several different spending measures — the amount of money raised, the amount raised from within L.A. County, and independent spending.

Deep-pocketed business leaders and law enforcement unions are spending big to back Hochman (or to oppose Gascón). Gascón is trailing by a wide margin and isn’t receiving nearly the same amount of financial support he had back in 2020.

This may or may not affect how you vote. But it provides a few more dimensions to help you understand this race and others you see on your ballot.

If you want more on this race, check out these resources from LAist: This breakdown of the candidates' visions from Civics and Democracy Correspondent Frank Stoltze, our podcast series on Gascón and our Voter Game Plan guide.

LAist data journalist Maloy Moore contributed to this story. 

This series is supported by the American Press Institute.

That ocean breeze is just not cutting it in schools in Torrance and Long Beach as Southern California reels from a heat wave.

Parents have taken to social media, created petitions and are proposing a bond measure in order to address the sweltering classrooms as temperatures hit triple digits in some areas.

Only 25% of Torrance Unified classrooms have air conditioning, according to a district spokesperson. And while 90% of Long Beach Unified schools have air conditioning, the schools without air conditioning have to bear this heat spell until the end of 2027 when new air conditioning will be in all classrooms.

What are schools doing to beat the heat?

In Long Beach, the district says there are portable fans in classrooms without AC and the district has installed heat-blocking window covers.

"The things that we do immediately and have been doing for several years, hydration stations,” Keith Butler, the deputy superintendent at TUSD, told the school board early this week. “So our nutrition services freezes blocks of ice, puts them into containers with water, and students are — and staff are able to rotate through and at least get ice water.”

There is also a classroom rotation system so everyone gets a turn in cooling zones, he said.

Can schools close on extreme heat days?

Eric Mitchell, a spokesperson for LBUSD, told LAist, “The District will not close schools because of extreme weather unless the City of Long Beach Public Health Department or a state-authorized emergency response agency directs it.”

Baillie echoed his words adding that a state-declared emergency allows schools to close temporarily without needing to make up teaching time. School funding is dependent on attendance and instructional time.

If a local emergency is declared, school districts, she said, must consult with labor unions to adjust the school schedule to either extend the school year or move to a student-free professional development day.

“Our district is actively discussing creating union-approved ‘weather days’ that would provide a mechanism to adjust the schedule,” Baillie said. “Thresholds would be part of that discussion and might focus on when national weather alerts elevate a heat advisory to an extreme heat event, as they did this week.”

So how can Torrance get ACs in the classroom?

School districts like Torrance pay for facility upgrades like new ACs through district issued bond measures. A school district takes a loan and the people in that city pay back that loan through an increase in their property taxes. That is because there is no specific state allocation of funding for major upgrades or construction. Most of the money schools get from the state is spent on instruction and other student services. There have been some occasional grant programs, like CalShape, but no ongoing source of funding.

This week, a petition to get TUSD to place a bond measure on the ballot to fund ACs has already garnered over 1500 signatures.

But, Baillie said, “Third-party polling completed earlier this year showed a willingness to vote for additional future bonds; however, when specifically asked about the costs of specific bonds to fund the $520 million needed to upgrade the electrical systems and install AC at all 34 campuses, polling showed there would not be enough support (bonds require 55% +1 of voters in an election) to pass a bond for AC.”

And so the bond measure was not placed on the upcoming ballot.

Butler, the deputy superintendent, explained during this week’s school board meeting that parents cannot simply donate an AC unit.

“ One [reason] is it's not super effective to have a typical window unit from a home that would be trying to cool a 960 sq. ft. classroom with 27 students and a teacher, maybe an instructional aide,” he said. “But the bigger issue is the ones that are large enough to really do that, the room has to have a large electrical load, and our electrical system within our buildings where most of them were built in the 1960s, it's just not meant to handle what it does.”

LAist reporter Mariana Dale contributed to this article. 

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is hosting a buyback event Sunday where people can exchange their e-bikes and e-motorcycles for up to $1,000 in gift cards. The goal is to reduce the number of illegal bikes on the road, and give parents an incentive to get dangerous vehicles out of kids’ hands.

“These vehicles are not child’s play, and the consequences are incredibly dangerous and increasingly deadly,” DA Todd Spitzer said in a news release announcing the event.

Communities in Orange County have been grappling with a surge in e-bikes and e-motos on the road, including among young kids, and an accompanying increase in serious crashes.

“Our area has pretty much the highest concentration of e-bike injuries and e-bike accidents in the country,” said Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the trauma medical director at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.

Takeuchi said  just over 70% of the children treated at the hospital for e-bike injuries had some level of head injury, “from a simple concussion to devastating brain damage, brain bleed and skull fracture."

A lot of those injuries are among teenagers not wearing helmets, he said. Plus, many e-bikes on the market are too heavy and fast for children to control, Takeuchi said.

Besides safety concerns, tensions have flared with other drivers, pedestrians, and neighbors in areas with heavy concentrations of e-bikes.

Newport-Mesa Unified School District became one of the first districts in the country this year to restrict e-bikes to high school campuses only. District leaders say the policy is working to disincentivize young students from riding e-bikes to school. But at one middle school, students with e-bikes have opted to ride them anyway, parking in the surrounding neighborhood and raising the ire of homeowners.

The DA’s approach

The DA’s office has started to target parents who allow their children to ride e-bikes and e-motorcycles that have been illegally modified for high speeds, sometimes with deadly consequences. In April, the district attorney filed child endangerment charges against a mother from Aliso Viejo after her 14-year-old son struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest. The boy was riding an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 mph.

Details of the buyback program

The e-bike and e-motorcycle buyback program is part of the DA’s plan to address safety concerns with e-bikes. Local police departments, hospitals and the California Office of Traffic Safety will also be onsite with information booths.

People can bring in functioning or non-functioning e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and pocket bikes and exchange them for gift cards worth up to $1,000 — while supplies last.

The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 13, at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.

An appeals court issued a ruling Friday that strikes down a federal government effort to block a lower court’s order requiring the construction of 2,550 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles.

The long-running case, brought forward by disabled veterans struggling with homelessness in the L.A. area, has centered on the use of the sprawling 400-acre VA campus.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had previously scrutinized leases for the private Brentwood School’s athletic facilities, a parking lot company, an oil drilling enterprise and UCLA’s baseball stadium.

Ruling that the campus was meant to aid veterans, Carter ordered the VA to not renew the leases and quickly build 750 units of temporary housing and 1,800 units of permanent housing.

But Carter’s September 2024 order has been on hold ever since the defendants asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review his decision.

Case returns to lower court

On Friday, more than two-thirds of the court’s 29 judges ruled against the VA’s petition for a rehearing.

“It's a historic day for veterans,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs.

“The government has been fighting their veterans, who went to fight on behalf of the nation,” he added. “They've been fighting them like they are the enemy. They went to the district court to fight. They lost.”

Rosenbaum said he’s pleased to see the case return to Carter’s courtroom after a long appeals process. Carter, himself a Marine Corps veteran who served in the Vietnam War, took an active role in pushing the VA to address a homelessness crisis that has thousands of former service members experiencing homelessness on any given night in L.A. County.

Could the VA pursue further appeals? 

Carter has also ordered the VA to stop using veterans' disability payment benefits as a reason to make them ineligible for supportive housing programs due to income restrictions.

But Rob Reynolds, an Iraq War veteran who advocates for L.A.’s veteran community, said the federal government’s attempts to win an appeal could continue.

“The government can still appeal this to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Reynolds said.

When veterans involved in the case first heard today’s news on the 9th Circuit ruling, he said they immediately asked about the potential for further appeals.

“All of us are really hoping that the government stops this fight, and that we can get housing built for our veterans and end this madness once and for all,” Reynolds said.

A spokesperson for the VA declined to comment on the ruling, saying the department does not discuss pending litigation.

Jenny Yang, a comedian from L.A., has been traveling across the country turning immigrant grocery stores into comedy hubs. Now she’s back in L.A. getting ready to start a mini-residency in Highland Park, tape her first one-hour special and share moments from the tour.

Yang kicked off her Good Egg Immigrant Grocery Store Standup Comedy Tour in June in L.A., then took it to 15 cities across the country. She told LAist the decision came as a way to cope with the grief from her dad’s death, 10 failed in vitro fertilization treatments between 2020 and 2025 and seeing the news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids spread across the country.

She said the idea to tour grocery stores was a way to reclaim those spaces, after immigration enforcement left many afraid to go out and do simple tasks like buying groceries.

“If we cannot laugh in front of a wall of instant ramen around our bok choy," Yang said, "then what is the American dream for?"

Her routine wove in stories about her fertility struggles and the challenges of having to be a “good egg” growing up as the child of immigrant parents from Taiwan. Her hope for the tour was to connect with people, to make jokes and help people feel lighter after.

The tour proceeds went to local nonprofits serving immigrant communities, and Yang said those organizations helped recruit the grocery stores. She said some stores said no at first — they felt overwhelmed by ICE activity in their city, had lost staff or worried about drawing attention.

“That's part of the story of the tour is it's one thing to want to imagine this beautiful world where you can tell jokes inside of immigrant grocery stores," Yang said. "It's another thing to know what those obstacles are, and I think that's still very telling for where we are as a country.”

One moment stood out to Yang: performing at Shuang Hur Supermarket in Minneapolis. It’s near the memorial for Alex Pretti, the nurse that a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed in January as federal agents carried out immigration enforcement in the city.

“I was able to talk to Henry, the owner who’s a Chinese American uncle. [He] was so proud of being able to help his regular patrons, who for the most part even though it was an Asian centered grocery store, were majority Latino,” Yang said. “I was able to bear witness to their resilience as a community, what they did to take care of each other.”

Now she’s back in L.A. and is doing a mini-residency at the Outside In Theater at 5317 York Blvd. in Highland Park. Her first show is 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 12, followed by shows on Sept. 19 and 26 at the same time. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, and you can find them at Outside In's website.

In February 2027, Yang will be taping her first one-hour special at Rancho Meat Market #1 in Lincoln Heights. She describes it as a love letter to Los Angeles that’s endured so much, from the ICE raids to the January fires.

You can follow Jenny Yang’s work here.