LOS ANGELES — After George Floyd was killed by the police in Minneapolis this summer and America erupted in protest, cash started flooding the race for district attorney of Los Angeles County.

George Gascón, the former top prosecutor in San Francisco, seized the momentum swirling in the streets and honed his promises to reduce incarceration, tackle racial bias and reopen old police shooting cases that the incumbent had declined to prosecute. At his swearing-in ceremony on Monday, Mr. Gascón immediately put his plans in motion, announcing an end to seeking cash bail and other sweeping policy changes.

Los Angeles, with the nation’s largest prosecutor’s office and its biggest jail system, was at the vanguard of communities, urban and rural, in liberal and conservative states, that went in the opposite direction of President Trump’s law-and-order message last month by electing prosecutors who promised to send fewer people to prison.

The dynamics that propelled Mr. Gascón to victory played out in similar fashion in Austin, Texas, where a candidate vowing to end prosecutions of some drug sales won, and in Orlando, where voters elected Monique Worrell, whose background includes investigating claims of wrongful convictions.

In Georgia, Jackie Johnson, the Republican district attorney accused of mishandling the case of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black jogger who was chased and shot dead by a former investigator for her office and his son, was ousted by an independent who had the support of activists outraged over the handling of the case.

“It’s telling, because it’s not just in bluer, urban locations like Los Angeles,” said Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor and executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, which advises prosecutors and candidates seeking change. “We saw a number of D.A.s elected in Georgia. We saw D.A.s in Florida elected. We saw wins of reform-minded D.A.s in Michigan and Texas and Colorado and Columbus, Ohio.”

As the movement builds momentum, with more progressive prosecutors taking office each election cycle, they have increasingly come together to influence policy and make significant changes in America’s criminal justice system, despite growing pushback from police unions and state officials.

In a joint statement last month, dozens of prosecutors across the country called for reducing the number of people on parole and probation. And in California, several prosecutors, including Mr. Gascon’s successor in San Francisco, Chesa Boudin, formed an alliance aimed at promoting progressive candidates and taking positions on state legislation.

Taken together, their efforts amount to a challenge to the power and money of law enforcement unions, which have typically backed traditional, tough-on-crime candidates and have been seen by critics as standing against efforts to change policing.

In Los Angeles, which was seen as the most important prize for progressive activists in a wave of victories that started with the 2016 elections of Kim Foxx in Chicago and Kimberly Gardner in St. Louis, both candidates framed the outcome of the election, at least in part, around the reconsideration of policing and racial disparities in the criminal justice system forced upon the nation by the killing of Mr. Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer.

Mr. Gascón’s opponent, Jackie Lacey, who is Black and was the first woman to become district attorney in Los Angeles, told reporters in announcing her concession, “It may be said that one day the results of this election is a result of our season of discontent, and a demand to see a tsunami of change.”

Mr. Gascón, a Cuban émigré who began his law enforcement career patrolling the streets of Los Angeles as a police officer, was always a viable candidate — he earned enough votes in the March primary to force a runoff with Ms. Lacey, a fellow Democrat. He pushed back on the notion that the activism around Mr. Floyd’s death was decisive in his election, but acknowledged that it “altered the dynamics of this race.”

“There’s no question that the murder of George Floyd shook the conscience of this country in many corners where people were not concerned about this work before,” Mr. Gascón said in declaring victory.

Los Angeles has recently sent people to prison at a rate of four times its northern rival, San Francisco, where Mr. Gascón enacted a series of changes after becoming its district attorney in 2011. Ms. Lacey had the backing of several law enforcement unions, while Mr. Gascon benefited from the support of Black Lives Matter activists and wealthy individuals, including George Soros and Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix.

All told, more than $19 million poured into their race, according to The Los Angeles Times, a record for a district attorney’s race.

Sensing the mood in the streets after the killing of Mr. Floyd, many liberal leaders in Los Angeles, including Mayor Eric M. Garcetti and Congressman Adam Schiff, pulled their endorsements of Ms. Lacey and backed Mr. Gascón. His message of reducing incarceration resonated with voters despite a surge in gun violence and homicides in Los Angeles, a similar trend seen in other American cities that experts blame on the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Gascón’s victory came as Californians also voted down a measure, Proposition 20, that would have rolled back earlier reforms by reinstituting harsher sentences and reducing opportunities for parole, and approved a measure restoring voting rights for people convicted of felonies. And as a direct result of protests and national calls to “defund the police,” Los Angeles voters approved an initiative to shift money from jails to social services.

After taking office on Monday, Mr. Gascón enacted many of his campaign promises as policy, including efforts to review thousands of old cases to determine whether the prosecutor’s office should ask courts to reduce sentences or overturn convictions. Mr. Gascón also said he would end prosecutions of most first-time, nonviolent offenders and ban his office from seeking the death penalty or enhanced prison sentences for accused gang members.

“Whether you are a protester, a police officer or a prosecutor, I ask you to walk with me,” he said after being sworn in, adding, “We can break the multigenerational cycles of violence, trauma and arrest and recidivism that has led America to incarcerate more people than any other nation.”

His sweeping policy changes met with resistance, however, from proponents of more traditional law enforcement. “His plans will do nothing but further victimize Los Angeles residents,” the Los Angeles Police Protective League, a police union, said in a statement.

In his campaign, Mr. Gascón built a large coalition of support among Los Angeles’s diverse communities, including white voters who said they were moved by the summer protests and police shootings in the city and around the country.

“It’s policing gone too far,” said Janice Bronco, 72, who is white and lives in Lakewood, a small city in southern Los Angeles County. She decided to vote for Mr. Gascon after seeing an increase in news reports about Black men and women killed by the police. “I’m a supporter of the police, but so many are getting killed,” she said.

Ms. Bronco said she was concerned that Mr. Gascon had been too lenient on crime during his time as district attorney in San Francisco, but voted for him anyway. “Something’s got to change, especially in L.A.”

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