Luna jumped out front quickly when early ballot results were released from Tuesday’s election, but as updates trickled in as the evening wore on, Villanueva began making some slow gains.
But when semi-officials results were posted early Wednesday morning, Luna still had 57% of the vote, compared to 43% for Villanueva. It remained unclear how many vote-by-mail and provisional ballots remain to be counted. The next updated vote tally is not expected to be released until Friday, Nov. 11, then every subsequent Tuesday and Friday until all ballots are counted, a process that could last until the end of the month.
Luna is looking to pull off a rare feat by unseating a sitting sheriff. Villanueva’s victory four years ago over incumbent Jim McDonnell marked the first time in roughly a century that a sheriff had lost a re-election bid in the county. But now Villanueva finds himself in danger of meeting the same fate at the hands of Luna. The sheriff expressed confidence, however, that he would make up the deficit from early balloting as vote counting continued over the coming week.
“Let’s see what the vote says,” Villanueva told KCAL9 at his Monterey Park election night party. “… I think people just want to see the things that matter to them addressed — homelessness and violent crime.”
Luna, speaking to his supports in Long Beach Tuesday night, noted that the vote-counting will take a long time, but said he feels good about the direction of the numbers. “As I have met so many people throughout this great county, there was one thing that was very obvious to me … people were talking about the need for change,” Luna said. He said that as sheriff, he will be “accountable at the end of the day,” and will work to ensure “integrity” in the department.
The candidates ran a spirited campaign, with Luna attacking Villanueva over his torrid relationship with the county Board of Supervisors and accusing him of ignoring the issue of deputy gangs within the department. Villanueva has deflected such criticism, saying his battles with the board show he is a fierce defender of the department and its deputies, and insisting that he has gone to great lengths to attack and ban alleged deputy cliques in the agency.
“Mr. Luna, the Civilian Oversight Commission, the Board of Supervisors, they cannot wrap their minds around the idea that (on) my very first day in office, I removed the East L.A. station captain from his command because I had doubts about his ability to lead,” Villanueva said last week, responding to Luna’s latest allegation of inaction on the deputy gang issue. The sheriff said four deputies were also fired from the East L.A. station over their actions at a much-publicized fight during a deputy gathering at Kennedy Hall. He also said he implemented the department’s first-ever policy barring “outlaw groups,” codified it in training materials and sponsored legislation to extend the policy statewide.
“There is nothing legally we can do left,” Villanueva said. “We can’t line up people, strip them down and fire people with tattoos, as some people have literally suggested. So when my opponent falsely asserts that nothing has been done, he’s just repeating the narrative politically driven by the Oversight Commission that works for the board.”
Luna insisted last week that deputy gangs remain an issue, citing “men and women from the sheriff’s department who have come forward, good men and women who want this rooted out.”
Villanueva’s victory four years ago came with strong backing from reform-minded community groups and Democrats. But over the past four years, Villanueva’s support among those groups has waned as he repeatedly clashed with the Democrat-dominated Board of Supervisors over funding and policy matters. He has also repeatedly defied subpoenas to appear before the Civilian Oversight Commission and refused to enforce the county’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate among his deputies and department employees.
Villanueva’s campaign insists he has worked to restore public trust in the sheriff’s department, pointing to the rollout of body-worn cameras and boosting minimum requirements for new deputies. The campaign also boasts the agency is “the most diverse in the nation.”
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Dave Gray says
The sooner that L.A. County rids itself of Villanueva AND the deputy gang problem that has infested the sheriff’s department for decades, the better off everyone in the county will be. Hopefully, Luna will prevail and will put his foot down once he is sworn in so he can start hammering in the final nails to that coffin once and for all. It will be a big job, and he will certainly need the right department leaders in place to assist him, but it MUST be done and he MUST not fail so that some sort of confidence is restored to a damaged LASD that once was one of the pre-iminent law enforcement agencies in the entire nation. But first, Villanueva has to be defeated, and I am very hopeful that the county’s voters seem to have sent that message, loud and clear!
Tim Scott says
LOL…if this is Villanueva “working to restore the public trust” he is absolutely incompetent.
Frank Rizzo says
Incompetent, impotent, look in mirror! Pot call kettle black? Projecting?