LOS ANGELES — The campaign to recall Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón has less than a month to get the signatures needed to trigger a special election.

Organizers got a boost Tuesday when a similar campaign in San Francisco successfully ousted another progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin.

Outspoken victims, like a Venice mother who was hit by a teenage driver, are fueling the effort in LA, arguing progressive policies prevented justice in their cases. Video of a 16-year-old driver hitting Rachel and her baby, Charlie, went viral last summer after it was shared by a deputy DA who supports the recall.

“My last thoughts before getting hit were, ‘I just need to get Charlie up into the air as high as I can so the nose of the car doesn’t crush him,’ because that’s what would have happened,” said Rachel, who has asked news outlets not to use her last name to protect her privacy.

The teenage driver was under the influence and locked eyes with Rachel before crashing into her, Rachel said, who believes the hit was intentional. Rachel told Spectrum News 1 the Los Angeles Police Department responded at the scene and gave the driver a traffic ticket before taking him to the hospital and releasing him to his mother. The LAPD did not respond to emails requesting confirmation.

About a week later, Deputy District Attorney John McKinney shared the dramatic video of the incident. He began helping Rachel through the process of seeking justice in her case. Eventually, Rachel says she was told under Gascón’s directives, the 16-year-old driver could not be charged with attempted murder or assault with a deadly weapon. He pleaded guilty to two counts of felony assault and felony hit-and-run and a judge sentenced him to a minimum of five months in a juvenile camp.

Rachel is outraged.

“Naively I thought, ‘Oh, this kid is going to go away for five to ten years at least.’”

Stories like Rachel’s and other victims who are outraged over how Gascón’s directives impacted their cases are fueling the attempt to recall the progressive DA. Proponents need to submit 566,857 valid signatures from LA County residents by July 6 to trigger a special election. They’ve collected more than half a million.

In an unprecedented move, the campaign mailed signature forms directly to 3.5 million voters with return envelopes. Spokesman Tim Lineberger said Tuesday’s successful recall of Boudin in San Francisco shows they can win, even in progressive places like Los Angeles.

“I think it sends a resounding message about what voters are looking for in their district attorney. They want a district attorney who will actually prosecute crime,” Lineberger said.

Gascón was swept into office in 2020, promising systemic reform after a summer of outrage over the murder of George Floyd. He ran as the man for the moment, advocating to end policies that fuel mass incarceration.

On his first day, Gascón announced sweeping directives to end sentencing enhancements and to stop trying juveniles as adults. He disputes that any of those directives impacted Rachel’s case and maintains the juvenile camp is the most appropriate place for the teen driver.

“I want to tell her, ‘This is the best that we have today,’” Gascón said. “Warehousing these men for a few more years and having them come back as a professional, hardened criminal is not going to be good for her or good for any of us.”

Gascón accuses prosecutors in his office who support the recall of politicizing sensitive cases and says facts don’t support their tough-on-sentencing approach. The American Bar Association found that teenagers who are treated like adults are more likely to re-offend than those who get punishments geared toward adolescents.

“The reality is, counties including this county in the past, where you had a more conservative, traditional district attorney, they were not being hammered for every decision, good, bad or indifferent,” Gascón said.

The district attorney’s reforms are lauded by former inmates like Caesar McDowell, who was able to have his sentence reduced and now helps others through his Unite the People nonprofit.

“We have cases where guys have been sentenced under the gang enhancement laws, given an extra five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years because their friends had on a hat on Facebook,” McDowell said. “That’s not what the people are looking for.”

Rachel also believes in reform, but also that the DA has a duty to prosecute violent criminals to the furthest extent of the law.

“I know he has done some good things, but I can’t say that the good outweighs the bad,” Rachel said.

She worries that teenage driver will re-offend after he gets out of juvenile camp and hopes that LA County will have a new district attorney if he does.