Stephen Lawrence Cooley (born May 1, 1947) is an American politician and prosecutor. He was the Los Angeles County District Attorney from 2000 to 2012. Cooley was re-elected in 2004 and again in 2008. In 2010, Cooley won the Republican nomination for California Attorney General against John C. Eastman and Tom Harman in the June 8 primary election. During the general election campaign, Cooley said he would defend Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriages in California but was then being appealed in the federal courts. Cooley lost to the Democratic nominee, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, in the November 2 general election, a close race, the results of which were not finalized until November 24, 2010. Early life and education The second of five children, Cooley was born at St. Vincent's Hospital (now St. Vincent's Medical Center) in Los Angeles. His father was an FBI agent and his mother a homemaker. Cooley attended Pater Noster High School in Los Angeles. At California State University, Los Angeles, Cooley served two terms as student body president and was selected for membership in Phi Kappa Phi. He was also a member of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity. In 1970, he was commencement speaker for his graduating class. He entered the University of Southern California Law School and received his Juris Doctor in 1973. That same year he joined the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. Cooley served over seven years as a reserve police officer with LAPD and 27 years as prosecutor. Los Angeles County District Attorney Cooley challenged two-term incumbent District Attorney Gil Garcetti in the 2000 election. Garcetti and Cooley had a longstanding personal and professional rivalry, going back to at least 1996 when Cooley supported Garcetti's opponent for re-election, John Lynch. Garcetti defeated Lynch by a margin of approximately 5,000 votes out of slightly more than 2.2 million votes. After the election, Garcetti demoted Cooley from a supervisory position to the county's obscure Welfare Fraud division. The move mirrored Garcetti's demotion as the chief deputy for the entire county in 1988 by then-incumbent Ira Reiner, which caused Garcetti to challenge his former mentor and defeat him in the 1992 general election. Cooley upset Garcetti in a competitive three-person primary, taking 39 percent of the vote to Garcetti's 37, forcing the two into a runoff in the November general election. In the two-person runoff, Cooley defeated Garcetti