Column: George Gascón and Todd Spitzer are more alike than you think. Hubris unites them

George Gascón gained his race for Los Angeles County district lawyer towards an entrenched incumbent, in a shocking upset. He vowed to upend the workplace, which he decried as antiquated and out of tune in its strategy to combating crime.

However Gascón, previously a high-ranking LAPD officer and San Francisco district lawyer, instantly proved controversial, each inside and out of doors the courtroom.

Prosecutors started to file lawsuits towards their boss, alleging skilled incompetence and private vendettas. Enemies launched a rhetorical barrage of well-funded fusillades. District attorneys throughout California shunned considered one of their very own.

As a substitute of making an attempt to make peace with opponents, Gascón refused to permit the likelihood he was unsuitable till it was too late, when he was in a combat for his political life.

He’s going through a second recall try in as a few years despite the fact that Gascón was simply elected in 2020. The union for rank-and-file L.A. County prosecutors lately gave him an amazing vote of no confidence.

Now becoming a member of Gascón within the pantry of pilloried prosecutors is his polar reverse, Orange County D.A. Todd Spitzer.

Gascón and Spitzer characterize two radically completely different world views. L.A.’s prime prosecutor desires to reform what he sees as a damaged tradition of punitive punishment, whereas Spitzer would’ve made an ideal hanging choose in a John Wayne western.

The 2 unsurprisingly don’t like one another. Spitzer is operating for reelection utilizing the hashtag #NoLAinOC and claims all of Los Angeles’ present ills are the fault of Gascón’s allegedly soft-on-crime strategy.

Gascón, for his half, has described Spitzer’s scorched-earth philosophy as “extremely harmful and fully faraway from actuality.”

However being conservative hasn’t saved Spitzer from Gascón’s predicament. The longtime politician has had a February to overlook.

Tracy Miller, a former O.C. senior assistant D.A., filed a declare alleging Spitzer made improper contact with somebody tied to a high-profile homicide case. She says she was lately pushed out of her job for standing as much as an accused sexual harasser who simply so occurred to be Spitzer’s pal.

Ebrahim Baytieh, one other former senior assistant D.A., whom Spitzer as soon as described as his philosophical North Star, accuses Spitzer in a lately leaked memo of endangering a double homicide prosecution.

Spitzer’s sin: opining throughout a closed-door assembly that Black males date white ladies to boost their popularity in society.

Baytieh, whom Spitzer lately fired over alleged misconduct, argued that the racist feedback needs to be disclosed to protection attorneys.

In a memo to the choose, a Newport Seaside police lieutenant investigating the case accused Spitzer of a “cover-up” over the “unsolicited, derogatory and racist remark about Black males/individuals.”

All of this was a prelude to what has strengthened requires Spitzer’s resignation: a video by which Spitzer makes use of the N-word a number of instances in entrance of a legal professionals group whereas quoting hate speech.

O.C. prosecutors demanded an all-hands assembly with their boss, which was held Friday afternoon. The third question in a seven-page record of questions the prosecutors posed: “If a majority of your line [prosecutors] take a vote in favor of no confidence, will you step down?”

Gascón and Spitzer had been at all times completely different sides of the identical coin. Each have distinctive hoarse voices, nice hair and a aptitude for self-aggrandizing themselves because the saviors of their occupation.

Their strategy to a job that’s imagined to be apolitical is bringing them doable political damage, employees revolts — and mistrust from a public that simply desires district attorneys to make life safer for everybody.

I forecast a day of reckoning for each of them way back. Gascón and Spitzer will be seen as Shakespearean characters who masterfully fend off opponents however don’t have any reply for his or her worst enemy: themselves.

A way of superiority repeatedly makes them step in it once they can least afford it.

Spitzer’s use of the N-word occurred at a banquet for the Iranian American Bar Assn. in November 2019, with a video of the speech surfacing final week. He defended saying the N-word, in addition to slurs towards the LGBTQ and Center Japanese communities, arguing that he wanted to repeat the phrases of hate crime perpetrators to totally illustrate the evil of racism.

As somebody who used to usually cowl white-power teams in Orange County, I perceive his clarification and may even sympathize with it.

However the chutzpah of Spitzer to assume he might get away with uttering the N-word in a society the place it’s been successfully banished! Did he actually assume he was above everybody else and that he would get a move? The reply, unsurprisingly, is sure.

It’s how Spitzer has carried himself all through his profession. When requested by the nonprofit publication Voice of OC to touch upon the allegations by Miller and Baytieh, he accused them of being acolytes of former Orange County D.A. Tony Rackauckas, who allegedly taught them “how one can cheat, search revenge and eviscerate your enemies.”

If these prosecutors had been so horrible, Todd, why didn’t you hearth them upon assuming workplace? And what does it say that you simply as a substitute stored them in your inside circle till they criticized you?

Gascón is sensible sufficient to not let phrases come again to hang-out him. His Achilles’ heels are his actions.

One in all his first initiatives was a blanket ban on making an attempt juveniles as adults.

For 2 years, he confronted unrelenting criticism from victims, their members of the family and his personal prosecutors for the stance, which Gascón justified with science and stats and vowed to by no means budge from.

This month, he budged, saying that juveniles might be tried as adults on a case-by-case foundation. The transfer got here after a lady was caught bragging concerning the mild sentence she acquired for a sexual assault she dedicated as a 17-year-old.

Gascón claimed he was merely refining his place. However nobody buys that clarification when he’s clearly making an attempt to appear powerful on crime within the face of a recall marketing campaign that may paint him as something however.

Gascón and Spitzer are banking on the voters who put them in workplace not too way back to shrug about their present missteps and reelect them.

However they’ll by no means have the ability to escape their inherent flaws. The higher fictional analogy isn’t Othello or Macbeth however Harvey “Two-Face” Dent, a self-righteous villain within the Batman universe who noticed the world solely in absolutes. That perspective finally condemned him to a self-defeating doom.

What job did Two-Face maintain in Gotham earlier than his tragic flip? District lawyer.