Ryan Khojasteh, a 30-year-old Alameda County prosecutor who was among 15 fired from the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office during the 2022 administration change, will announce his candidacy today for San Francisco’s top prosecutor seat.
“People are frustrated. They feel unsafe,” said Khojasteh, a one-time employee of ousted District Attorney Chesa Boudin. “And they want not only something to believe in, but they want to have hope that our city will be able to turn the corner in a responsible way.”
Under current DA Brooke Jenkins, Khojasteh said, the city has not become safer. Jenkins helped recall Boudin, her predecessor, by blaming him for crime rates, but Khojasteh pointed out that the city broke its all-time record of overdose deaths in 2023, and saw a slight increase in violent crime last year under Jenkins’ watch.
“This city needs a responsible prosecutor that understands job number one is public safety,” said Khojasteh.
In November, he will run against Jenkins. If elected, Khojasteh said he would be the youngest DA in the country.
The 30-year-old was born and raised in the Bay Area, and received his law degree from University of California Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings). Before he joined the San Francisco DA’s office as a prosecutor in 2020, he spent a year working unpaid at the Public Defender’s Office.
Jenkins fired Khojasteh and more than a dozen others after she took over the office in July 2022. In January 2023, he took a position as a deputy district attorney, joining other fired or departing former colleagues from San Francisco in the Alameda District Attorney’s Office under DA Pamela Price — another progressive prosecutor facing a recall movement.
In Alameda, Khojasteh has worked in restitution for crime victims, parole and probation violations, and collaborative courts, which divert criminal defendants into treatment or other programs.
And when the District Attorney election was moved from 2023 to 2024 through Proposition H, Khojasteh realized he met the minimum of five years of experience required to run for the office.
In an interview, he accused Jenkins and Mayor London Breed, who appointed her, of playing politics with a seat that should remain “non-political.”
Khojasteh believes Jenkins fired him because he supported reforms to the criminal justice system, like not prosecuting juveniles as adults. While at the DA’s office working in the general felonies and juvenile units, Khojasteh said, he never lost a case, he won jailtime for fentanyl dealers, and he was praised by San Francisco police officers, but lost his job anyway.
“The honor and integrity of the DA’s office has been eroded,” Khojasteh said. “It’s important that people can trust and respect our DA to find them credible.”
DAs, for example, should stay out of the “high-profile political decisions” of criminal prosecutions in cases of police misconduct, Khojasteh said.
Instead of the DA’s office deciding whether to file charges against police officers — something former DA Boudin attempted, to much backlash and little success — Khojasteh said a grand jury should consider evidence and decide whether those cases should go to trial.
Khojasteh received an endorsement from San Francisco’s former district attorney and police chief, George Gascón, who is now the district attorney of Los Angeles.
“San Franciscans deserve a district attorney who is committed to real public safety, instead of playing politics,” Gascón said in a statement, adding that Khojasteh has experience in different sectors of the DA’s office. “I believe Ryan has the right vision to balance accountability, rehabilitation and community-based partnerships to make the city safer.”
Khojasteh said he plans to implement a data-driven approach to the DA’s office, which could mean treatment, diversion programs or incarceration, depending on the case.
“Incarceration is one of many tools, and should be used to protect the public when necessary,” he wrote in an opinion piece last week. “At the same time, we know that over-incarceration does not necessarily make us safer… That’s why we need to be cautious before embracing the simplistic “tough-on-crime” narrative.”
Khojasteh has also been outspoken against DA’s office turnover, and said if he wins, he plans to help the prosecutor’s office unionize to win employment protections. He said the office should remain stable and ensure criminal cases stay on track, regardless of who is in charge.
In 2018, Khojasteh made his first bid for office, putting his name in the hat for U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s seat representing California’s 12th Congressional District. He served on the city’s Immigrant Rights Commission for six years, and sat on the board of San Francisco Young Democrats.
Khojasteh has also won endorsements from much of the City College board and San Francisco Unified School District school board, as well as former supervisor and State Senator Mark Leno, former U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, former State Superintendent of Public Schools Delaine Eastin, former supervisor and State Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, and the 24-year-old Mayor of South San Francisco, James Coleman.
“With all the vitriol and toxicity and scapegoating in our politics, I’m hoping as a younger candidate, as someone that believes in these things, as someone who’s had family affected by crime, I … can talk thoughtfully about these important issues and hopefully earn the respect and the trust of the voters of the city.”
Thank you for this informative article. I now know enough about Mr. Khojasteh to be certain that I will never vote for him.
This guy must have hired a great PR firm. Stories today in Mission Local, SF Standard, SFist. I wonder if all of these outlets might be a little more circumspect, and consider whether they want to give space to an obviously unserious candidate. He’s been a lawyer for 4 years? Ludicrous. Of course, he ran for *Congress* within weeks of graduating law school. A real striver, but not someone with any policy chops or actual experience in the world.
Good luck with your quixotic campaign Mr. Khojasteh — with all your endorsements from the status quo reactionaries, i.e., the so-called “SF progressives”.
The majority of San Franciscans do not want a public defender for district attorney.
We want Results.
He sounds good, but then you find out he is part of Price’s office. Price is being recalled and for good reason, she tough of victims and easy on crime. She doesn’t look for the evidence, she pushes the evidence aside. Crime has escalated since she took over and she won’t any take responsibility for it. People can film a crime, have pictures, there is evidence and yet nothing is being done. With all the street cameras, cell phones, doorbell, store and other cameras it should make their jobs much easier but they don’t prosecute. Why is crime getting worse? Where are the results.
There is a program in Alameda Point Collaborative which who gets most of it funding from the Government, but if you ask for any information about how many people they helped, who went through their program and who are now living on their own, they won’t tell you. They want more money but where are the results or are you just throwing money at the problem.
With these 2 examples people want to see results and they haven’t provided us with any.
People who want to know if this lightweight is capable of running an In-n-Out, much less the DA’s office, should look for one of the photos available online of his desk when he had a job as a prosecutor. Files on the floor everywhere. It looked like Donald Trump’s bathroom.
San Francisco deserves better than that.
this guy is a clown . when he ran for congress, he somehow had money for an office and glossy mailers, yet was just a college kid. where did the money come from?
Classic progressive move – don’t get a real candidate – get a joke who will run around screaming politically correct lines and LOSE THE ELECTION AGAIN ten go have a protest because they’re getting steamrolled again. Progressives are nothing but a fiction only kept around so angry billionaires can get their tax cuts.
wow this guy doesn’t realize how SF politics is changing. Good luck to a Boudin acolyte…now a Price employee lol. Those are almost disqualifying nowadays.
Something seems to be missing…. Like why was he fired,EXACTLY? This guy is trying to ride the wave of criminal “reform” by changing his color and disposition faster than an octopus on crime fighting coral. Something stinks here with him.
Mission Local is slacking off. This article appears to omit the critical question as to what was the color of the underwear that Khojasteh is wearing.
“If you have opened the email please delete it, do not forward, copy or otherwise disseminate this email.”
As half the office whips out their cell phones and takes a pic.