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Former Lengthy Seashore police Chief Robert Luna jumped out to a big early lead tonight in his bid to unseat incumbent Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.
Outcomes from the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder confirmed Luna with practically 60% of the roughly 1 million votes counted as of this night, whereas Villanueva had roughly 40%. If that margin holds even by half, it could be a surprising fall for Villanueva who received workplace within the 2018 election cycle with a 53%-47% vote.
That victory 4 years in the past over incumbent Jim McDonnell marked the primary time in roughly a century {that a} sheriff had misplaced a re-election bid within the county. Now Villanueva finds himself at risk of assembly the identical destiny by the hands of Luna.
The pair have run a spirited marketing campaign, with Luna attacking the incumbent over his damaged relationship with the county Board of Supervisors and accusing him of ignoring the difficulty of deputy gangs inside the division. Villanueva has deflected such criticism, saying his battles with the board present he’s a fierce defender of the division and its deputies, and insisting that he has gone to nice lengths to assault and ban alleged deputy cliques within the company.
“There’s nothing legally we will do left,” Villanueva has claimed. “We are able to’t line up folks, strip them down and hearth folks with tattoos, as some folks have actually advised. So when my opponent falsely asserts that nothing has been finished, he’s simply repeating the narrative politically pushed by the Oversight Fee that works for the board.”
However voters could also be siding with the board.
A poll measure that may give the Board of Supervisors the authority to take away a publicly elected sheriff from workplace for trigger was headed for victory tonight, incomes an enormous 71% “Sure” vote from the roughly 900,000 votes tallied to this point, based on the
The Board of Supervisors voted in August to put Measure A on the poll, calling it an effort to make sure accountability within the county’s law- enforcement company. However incumbent Sheriff Alex Villanueva has blasted the proposal as unconstitutional, calling it a blatant energy seize by a board with which he has repeatedly clashed.
Villanueva’s victory 4 years in the past got here with sturdy backing from reform-minded group teams and Democrats. However over the previous 4 years, Villanueva’s help amongst these teams has waned as he repeatedly clashed with the Democrat-dominated Board of Supervisors over funding and coverage issues. He
has additionally repeatedly defied subpoenas to look earlier than the Civilian Oversight Fee and refused to implement the county’s Covid vaccination mandate amongst his deputies and division staff.
Luna has argued through the marketing campaign that the sheriff’s division is being “mismanaged” by Villanueva and mentioned he’ll work to revive belief within the company. He additionally touted his place as an outsider with no connections to the sheriff’s division.
“Rising up in East Los Angeles, patrolled by the sheriff’s division, opened my eyes to examples of each good and dangerous policing, and impressed my 36-year profession in regulation enforcement,” Luna mentioned in a candidate assertion.
He mentioned he’ll work to “modernize” the sheriff’s division and its jail system and enhance the psychological well-being of deputies and staff.
Metropolis Information Service contributed to this report.
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