On Tuesday night, Nathan Hochman won the race for Los Angeles County district attorney against incumbent George Gascón, who is known as the “godfather of progressive prosecutors,” by a wide margin.
At an election night viewing party for Hochman, who is Jewish, in Beverly Hills that drew some 200 attendees, including Los Angeles Jews, JNS observed many yellow ribbon pins expressing solidarity with the hostages, whom Hamas terrorists hold in Gaza.
Before the national media called the race for President Donald Trump, attendees told JNS about their feelings about the race and reacted to both Hochman’s decisive victory, and CNN results, which showed a likely Trump victory, on television screens set up in the event venue’s courtyard.
Sandra Chorches, a self-described “proud Zionist Jew,” wouldn’t say for whom she voted but said that she hopes the president will support Israel.
“It’s a humanity issue, not so much a political issue, and I just hope that the United
States continues to support Israel, their ally,” she told JNS.
Chorches isn’t happy with the ways that Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have addressed Israel and Jews during their campaigns.
“I think both candidates have been using Israel and the Jews as, I don’t know, I don’t want to say ‘a scapegoat’—but an issue,” she said. “We’re a people.”
As they awaited Hochman’s victory lap, attendees sipped ginger ale, beer and wine from open bars and snacked on pastries, which came from the Compton, Calif.-based Ruben’s Bakery and Mexican Food.
Earlier in the year, the bakery was burglarized and ransacked by dozens of thieves, which many of the party attendees saw as a sign of the increasing Los Angeles crime wave that Gascón hasn’t addressed.
At about 9:30 p.m., as media outlets reported that Trump had collected 230 of the 270 electoral votes he needed to be declared the next president, Sharona Neysani, a volunteer with a Beverly Hills-based mental health foundation for teens, said she was confident that Trump was the winner.
“It’s a fantastic thing,” she told JNS.
Her pro-Trump views are largely informed by the things that she and her family experienced when she was growing up in Iran.
“As a Persian Jew,” she told JNS, “I’m concerned for Israel, first, and I’m concerned for the whole world.”
John Mirisch, a Beverly Hills city councilman and former mayor of the city, told JNS that he was “thrilled” about Hochman’s win.
Mirisch and Hochman were in middle school together, and when Hochman ran for eighth-grade class president, Mirisch supported him, he told JNS.
“It’ll be great for L.A. County to finally have accountability—someone who understands that criminal justice reform and public safety go hand-in-hand,” Mirisch said.
The former mayor wouldn’t tell JNS whom he supported in the presidential election.
“Whoever is good for Israel,” he said. “I wrote in ‘Josh Shapiro,’” he added of the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania, and one-time contender for Harris’s running mate. “We’ll see.”
