Lacey said that while nearly 800,000 votes are yet to be counted as of her Friday press conference, and while she may close the gap — which stood at about 230,000 votes as of the time of the announcement — her consultants said she would not overtake Gascón.
Notably, during the announcement, Lacey thanked her husband, who was recently accused by Black Lives Matter activists of recklessly brandishing a loaded handgun at them when they rang the Laceys' doorbell earlier this year.
"Thank you most of all to my hero, my husband, who stood by my side and who was willing to put his own life in danger in order to protect me," Lacey said in her announcement.
Gascón will take control of the largest local prosecutorial office in the country. The department's website boasts that its nearly 1,000 attorneys are tasked with prosecuting about 71,000 alleged felonies and about 112,000 alleged misdemeanors each year across 78 cities and a population — more than 10 million residents — that is greater than that of 42 states.
Lacey, who was seeking her third term in office, had continued to pursue the death penalty even after California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium on capital punishment, and she resisted reforms that meant people who didn't kill anyone couldn't be charged with felony murder for their role in a death.
For years, the Black Lives Matter movement has criticized her for not bringing criminal charges against police officers who have killed people on the job. That reputation was reinforced after her husband pulled a gun on BLM protestors who gathered at his front door and after it was reported that 75% of her campaign contributions this cycle came from law enforcement unions.
But Lacey, the first woman and first Black person to become L.A.'s chief prosecutor, did not cast herself as tough on crime this cycle. She instead focused on her creation of a mental health diversion program that finds alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders suffering from mental illness, and pointed to her support for a ban on private prisons and reforms to California's cash bail system.
Gascón won a slew of endorsements, including a late-in-the-race switch from L.A.'s mayor. Gascón was an early member of the reformist prosecutor club, having worked as San Francisco's district attorney for eight years.
There, he instituted a slew of reforms. He retroactively applied the state's legalization of marijuana to clear marijuana misdemeanor conviction records and helped launch San Francisco's Young Adult Court, which seeks alternatives to incarceration for defendants aged 18 to 24.
His office's reluctance to go after low-level offenders was blamed by critics for a 49% increase in San Francisco's property crimes — mostly car break-ins. And though he created an independent bureau to investigate police misconduct, Bay Area progressives have also expressed disappointment, saying he likewise failed to prosecute police who killed civilians on the job.
In October, BLM activists hit Lacey and her husband with a negligence and assault suit in Los Angeles County court over the purported incident involving the loaded gun.
According to the complaint, David Lacey's gun-waving happened in March. Black Lives Matter organizer Melina Abdullah, a professor at California State University, Los Angeles, and demonstrators Dahlia Ferlito and Justin Marks were part of a group of about 40 protesters who gathered outside the Laceys' home one morning to peacefully protest the district attorney's refusal to meet with members of the community, they said.
Abdulla, Ferlito and Marks broke away from the larger group and rang the Laceys' doorbell, they said. After waiting for a short time, Abdullah said she heard what sounded like "a metallic clicking sound from inside the house."
The door then opened, and David Lacey stood there pointing a large handgun at them, according to the suit.
"Get off my porch or I will shoot you," he said, waving his gun at them, the suit says.
The activists said they could see Lacey's finger on the trigger and that he had cocked the hammer back on the gun.
Lacey again threatened to shoot them, pointing the gun at each of the three protesters in turn, before closing the door, they claim.
Lacey is facing unrelated racial discrimination allegations in a suit over her alleged failure to investigate information that Democratic donor Ed Buck sexually predated and forcibly injected Black men with methamphetamine.
Los Angeles County has argued that prosecutors can't be sued for declining to prosecute, saying the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department investigated Nixon's claims, but that the district attorney's office makes decisions based on the available evidence. Sheriff's deputies interviewed witnesses, and Lacey's decision had nothing to do with race, the county said earlier this year.
--Additional reporting by Lauren Berg, Hailey Konnath and Cara Bayles. Editing by Philip Shea.
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