By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Orange County, CA – It was another day at the office in the Orange County DA race. Incumbent DA Todd Spitzer held what he called a “No LA in OC” press conference on the physical property line separating Los Angeles and Orange Counties.
Spitzer was joined at the press conference by victims of crime and their family members in both Orange and Los Angeles Counties and shared stories arguing that electing Pete Hardin to DA in Orange County would increase crime.
“The #NoLAinOC theme is not an insult to Los Angeles, but a warning against failed pro-criminal policies and woke District Attorneys who are accelerating the demise of communities around the country,” the Spitzer campaign stated in a press release. “Spitzer is running against a clone of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon and is fighting to keep the same disastrous policies that have destroyed Los 
Angeles from spreading to Orange County and elsewhere.”
“We’re standing literally on the border between Orange County and Los Angeles,” Spitzer said during his press conference. “I demanded that we have this event in the open to ensure that people who both supported me and opposed me could be in the same place at the same time, a person like me, who’s been an elected official for over 30 years in this county knows thousands of votes and thousands of decisions that you aren’t going to necessarily make everybody happy all the time.”
Spitzer added, “So let me tell you about why this is such an intense conversation. It’s not just an intense conversation in Orange County. This is an American conversation.
“This is about whether or not we’re going to continue to elect woke prosecutors in Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Los Angeles,” Spitzer said. “It pains me obviously to hear the victims who have lost their trust in their district attorney in Los Angeles, when something bad happens, you’re supposed to be able to trust your law enforcement officials who will protect you and fight for you. Not abandoned you as your district attorney.”
Spitzer’s campaign charged that, during the press conference, his opponent “reached a new low by sending a mob to harass, accost, intimidate, and shout down the women, victims, and victims’ family members in attendance.”
According to their release, “Throughout the press conference, Hardin’s mob stood inches behind the attendees, shouted profanities and slurs in their ears, held large signs with pointed edges directly above their heads and near their eyes, and interrupted victim’s family members who were speaking.”
“If the meaning of #NoLAinOC wasn’t already clear enough, Hardin’s mob tactics only help further illustrate exactly what we are trying to keep out of our community,” said Spitzer. “If you want to come at me that way, fine; I can take it and will never cave to the woke mob. But to sic a mob on women and mothers of victims is a new low for Pete, and that’s saying a lot given Hardin’s history of sexual misconduct predatory behavior.”
Meanwhile Pete Hardin fired back challenging Spitzer to a series of public debates.
In a tweet, Hardin noted, citing a PPIC (Public Policy Institute of California) study, “Among the 15 largest counties, only Fresno & Orange County saw both violent and property crime rates increase in 2020.”
“Todd Spitzer took office in 2019,” Hardin said. “He is gaslighting voters because his policies have failed. Don’t let him get away with it.
“Homicides and homelessness are up double-digits since Todd Spitzer took office, so it’s no surprise that he’s trying to distract people with rhetoric about Los Angeles,” said Hardin. “From his consultants on the campaign to his actions in office, he has shown himself to be Orange County’s very own Donald Trump. He is a tyrant desperate to hold onto power irrespective at any cost. Ultimately, the numbers don’t lie, but Todd does, and it’s time for him to answer for what’s happening here in this community.”
Hardin’s campaign accused Spitzer of waging an “increasingly unhinged and Trump-style misinformation campaign.”
Hardin noted, “Spitzer’s tactics of criticizing crime, homelessness and public safety strategies in other counties is novel, given the significant increases that Orange County has experienced since he took office.”
According to the Department of Justice, “since Todd Spitzer took office, violent crime is up with homicides surging 20% while assault with a firearm increased a whopping 30%.”
Moreover, they cited HUD data, showing “since Todd Spitzer took office, homelessness has skyrocketed more than 40%.”
Finally, according to the Human Relations Commission’s annual report, “hate crimes against the AAPI community jumped more than 1800% from 2020 to 2021 alone.”
“Meanwhile, as Spitzer holds himself out as a savior of victims and portrays himself as tough-on-crime, an independent report found that he outed the identities and exploited victims of sexual harassment in his own office,” a release charged.
According to the independent report, Spitzer “provided an employee’s personnel information to a reporter in May 2021, to deflect the negative evidence about his own actions during the Logalbo [sexual harassment] investigation.”
Spitzer also faces a lawsuit for allegedly “defaming a victim advocate and maintains the dubious distinction as the first and only DA in California history, if not the nation, to be removed from a case because of his unethical treatment of survivors of sexual assault. Those survivors said that they had been “dragged through the mud” by him.”
“Aside from his use of victims as political props, DA Spitzer faces a sea of scandals,” Hardin’s campaign charged. An investigator he fired won his job back, with the arbitrator finding that the investigator “did what any reasonable person would do by preserving the evidence of Spitzer’s suspected criminal conduct.”
They said, “Ultimately, Spitzer’s Trump-style tactics come as no surprise given his employment of former Trump flacks and pandemic profiteers, both of whom were under criminal investigation. In fact, Spitzer even investigated one of the firms he currently employs for bilking Orange County taxpayers of millions of dollars.”
What a great campaign slogan for the OCDA.
He should slap “No LA in OC” on pics of the LA freight train thefts and circulate them.
https://today.fox-24.com/content/uploads/2022/01/27/b4d6b8f85a.jpg
His problem is that his own scene is perhaps the most corrupt in the nation.
Does it have scenes like the LA rail yard?
It’s all perception my little friend.
Basically Spitzer is going to try to run against Gascon and Hardin is going to run against Orange County – Informant Scandal, Evidence Scandal, sexual harassment scandal and more. This may end up the nastiest DA race we’ve seen.