sheriffs

Robert Luna seeks a second term as L.A. County Sheriff but faces nine challengers, including predecessor Alex Villanueva, whom he defeated in 2022.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Robert Luna is hoping to be the first L.A. County Sheriff to win a second term in more than 10 years. He points to a reduction in crime for the county during his term and says he brought stability after a series of one-term sheriffs since 2014.

Last year, deputy-patrolled areas of the county experienced a 12.5% drop in serious crimes from the previous year, including a drop of 12% in murders and 20% in auto thefts.

Perhaps the most vocal and well-known of Luna’s opponents is his predecessor, Alex Villanueva, who paints a picture of a department in disarray, with low morale and trouble in recruiting. Villanueva claims his return would keep deputies from leaving and appeal to new hires.

Former sheriff’s Lt. Eric Strong, who also served as chief of campus safety and security operations at the county probation office, has entered the fray once again after finishing third in 2022. Strong has called for increased transparency by the department, advocating for the agency to work with oversight bodies like the Office of Inspector General and the Civilian Oversight Committee.

“Nothing has really changed, and that’s why I’m running,” Strong said.

Mike Bornman, a retired former captain, also is vying for the job. He’s looking to lift morale inside the department, which he said has faced a series of challenges with social movements that have been “anti-cop,” such as the George Floyd protests of 2020 and calls to defund the police.

“There’s been no real pushback from law enforcement; there’s been nothing coming from this office relative to that,” Bornman said.

He said the department is struggling with difficulty in recruitment, significant overtime hours and deputies at risk of burnout.

Sgt. Karla Carranza is running again after an unsuccessful campaign in 2022. At one point assigned to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown L.A., Carranza has made jail reform one of her top campaign focuses, promising to reduce violence and lower the risk of lawsuits and what she says are preventable inmate deaths.

Brendan Corbett, also running for the job, served as assistant sheriff during Villanueva’s tenure. He’s looking to restructure the department, focus resources on patrol and line functions and increase the reserve program.

Lt. Oscar Martinez, assigned to the department’s Palmdale station, is running to unseat his boss and criticizes Luna for fostering relationships with the county board of supervisors and oversight bodies, saying his focus should be on law enforcement, not politics .

“The sheriff is more interested in protecting the political establishment,” Martinez said. “Under my leadership, the mission of the sheriff’s department is to fight crime. Our job is not to fix politics.”

Andre White, a detective with about 11 years at the department, also vowed to take a “community-oriented approach” if elected.

Some voters may recognize Sonia Montejano, a former senior deputy in the department’s court services division, as the court bailiff in the television court program “Judge Joe Brown.”

Montejano filed paperwork for the position and listed her personal website on campaign forms. Her website, however, makes no mention of her campaign or position on issues involving the department. She did not respond to requests for comment.

The feud between California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has escalated after Bonta asked a court to stop Bianco’s investigation into alleged election fraud.

In a 70-page petition filed with the Fourth Appellate District Monday, Bonta wrote that “the Sheriff’s misguided investigation threatens to sow distrust and jeopardize public confidence” in upcoming elections. The investigation, which he also called “sweeping and unprecedented,” is an abuse of the criminal process, he wrote.

Bianco, who is a leading Republican candidate for governor, last month seized more than 650,000 ballots cast in Riverside County in the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats.

The sheriff has said that his investigators are looking into allegations by a local citizens group that “did their own audit” and found that the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes — a claim that local election officials have emphatically rejected.

Bianco has described his probe as a “fact-finding mission” to determine if votes were fraudulently counted. He has accused the attorney general, a Democrat, of improperly interfering with what he says is a lawful criminal investigation.

In Riverside County, the proposition passed by more than 82,000 votes. Statewide, it passed with about 64% of the vote and a margin of more than 3.3 million ballots.

“Well, well, well, the political corruption in California just gets bigger and bigger,” Bianco said in a social media video Monday night in response to Bonta’s petition.

“Why in the world would Rob Bonta want that count stopped unless he was afraid of what that count would uncover?” he added. “We have an extremely politically biased appeals court, so this is going to be interesting.”

Political observers have said that Bianco, an outspoken supporter of President Trump, appears to be vying for attention from Trump, who has called on the federal government to “nationalize” state-run elections, remains fixated on his 2020 election loss and has falsely claimed widespread fraud.

Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State, said that Bianco’s investigation appears to be “an electoral ploy.”

“At this stage in the election, most voters haven’t really tuned into the gubernatorial race, and there are a ton of candidates,” she said. “People who don’t know his background will know now. This is clear signaling.”

The sheriff has denied the probe has anything to do with his campaign.

A poll released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading the crowded field of gubernatorial candidates by slim margins, with the Democratic vote split among multiple candidates in a left-leaning state.

Bonta’s office said in a statement Monday evening that it was asking the court to pause the investigation “while we work to understand its basis.”

Bonta’s petition revealed that — in addition to warrants issued on Feb. 9 and 23 — the sheriff obtained a third warrant from the Riverside County Superior Court on March 19 to restart a paused recount of the ballots. The warrants now are under seal.

Bonta’s office called the warrants and the affidavits supporting them legally deficient because “the Sheriff has not identified any particular crime that may have been committed by anyone — a necessary predicate to obtain a criminal search warrant.”
Bonta had earlier questioned whether Bianco had concealed important information from the magistrate judge who approved the warrants.

In his petition, Bonta wrote that the sheriff’s department had planned to assign “12 employees working four days a week, five to seven hours each day” to count the votes.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former senior trial attorney overseeing voting enforcement for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, agreed with Bonta’s assessment that the sheriff’s probe is a legally deficient “fishing expedition.” He questioned how Bianco got a judge to sign off on three warrants.

“You can’t use a warrant as a PR tool, as something to help your political campaign,” Becker said. “You have to meet certain standards in order to obtain a warrant, because a warrant is extraordinary. A warrant is saying we believe there is probable cause to seize evidence, and we need it now.”

Bianco said in a news conference Friday that a Riverside County Superior Court judge had ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the count. His investigators had already begun counting, but the tally would start over under the court’s guidance, Bianco said.

“This isn’t about counting yes and no votes,” Bianco said in his social media video Monday. “This is simply counting the total ballots and comparing that total with the number of votes. … Plain and simple. Common sense.”