Orange County voters appear to oust longtime Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas - latimes

Orange County voters on Tuesday appeared to oust longtime Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas in favor of challenger Todd Spitzer, a significant shift for an office that has been repeatedly rocked by scandals in recent years.

With all precincts reporting on Wednesday morning, Spitzer led Rackauckas in the race to become Orange County’s top prosecutor by nearly 6 percentage points, or more than 31,000 votes.

The bitter race included months of flame-throwing between Rackauckas, who has held the position for two decades, and Spitzer, his former protege. The winner will lead an office that handles more than 60,000 cases a year and wields an annual budget of about $145 million.

The district attorney’s race was among the ugliest in Southern California. Spitzer, an Orange County supervisor and former assemblyman, most recently accused Rackauckas of subverting the criminal justice system for political gain by waiting to file a high-profile rape case until just before the midterm elections.

His campaign also highlighted allegations that Rackauckas’ office illegally used jailhouse informants to obtain confessions. In 2015, a criminal court judge removed the district attorney’s office from the murder trial of Scott Dekraai, who shot and killed his ex-wife and seven others at a Seal Beach salon in 2011.

The so-called snitch scandal resulted in reduced or thrown-out charges in several other criminal cases and the retrial of several convicted killers. The district attorney’s office is now facing a civil lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Rackauckas won his first term as district attorney in 1998 and has since served five terms. When the 75-year-old last won reelection with 73.3% of the vote in 2014, he said he wouldn’t run again — but he gave it another go, in part to keep Spitzer from taking over the seat.

Spitzer signaled he was a serious threat when he garnered 35% of the vote to the incumbent’s 38% in the June primary. His campaign spent over $2.2 million, more than twice as much as Rackauckas’. - Read More
Orange County voters appear to oust longtime Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas

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