Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s bid for reelection will go to a runoff in November after early poll results showed him holding a healthy lead over retired Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna.
With nearly 29% of the expected votes counted, the Associated Press projected that Villanueva would not reach the 50%-plus-one threshold needed to avoid a runoff.
Trailing Villanueva by about 10 percentage points, Luna had not secured the second runoff spot by early Wednesday, leaving open the possibility that another challenger could overtake him, according to the AP.
But the other candidates were considerably behind. Sheriff’s Lt. Eric Strong was in third, with about half of Luna’s votes, and Los Angeles International Airport Police Chief Cecil Rhambo was a distant fourth.
About 200 people had gathered at an East L.A. restaurant Tuesday night for Villanueva’s election watch party. A few wore cowboy hats, and more wore green buttons with Villanueva’s picture and a campaign slogan. The mood turned slightly somber as the first results rolled in.
Villanueva took the stage for the first time just before 10 p.m., walking out to Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”
He began by pointing out that San Francisco’s progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, had been ousted in a recall election. “George Gascón, you’re next!” he said to rousing applause from the crowd, referring to the Los Angeles district attorney.
About his own race, he said: “I do know we’re sitting on top. And we’re anticipating staying on top.”
He added: “We can end this all tonight; we’ll find out soon enough. But you know what, even if it goes a long way, I’m built for endurance.”
At Luna’s home in Long Beach, meanwhile, there was an air of tempered excitement. Friends, family and campaign workers let out yelps of enthusiasm and breathed sighs of relief.
“I feel that people want change, they want good policing,” Luna said in the dining room. “I’m cautiously optimistic, but I’m humbled by the support that I’m getting at this point.”
Steve James, a former Long Beach police lieutenant who worked for years under Luna and was at the gathering Tuesday night, said he was “pleasantly surprised” by Luna’s early showing.
“I expected to see him in second. I didn’t expect to see him this close to Villanueva at this stage, and I didn’t expect to see him this far ahead of third,” James said.
“Looks like he’s going to be busy through November.”
Villanueva has had a tumultuous first term, marked by a string of controversies and a contentious, dysfunctional relationship with the county’s powerful Board of Supervisors, which controls his budget. And he has sparred throughout his four years in office with the watchdogs appointed to keep him and the department in check, rebuffing repeated subpoenas for him to answer questions under oath about a range of issues.
Much of the criticism focuses on what detractors say is Villanueva’s lackluster response to ganglike groups of deputies who are accused of glorifying aggressive policing and celebrating on-duty shootings. He also came under fire for, among other things, trying to cover up the fact that deputies shared graphic photos of the site where Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crashed.
The upheaval followed a highly improbable win in 2018, when the retired sheriff’s lieutenant rose out of relative obscurity to defeat the incumbent. He was the first challenger to dislodge a sitting L.A. County sheriff in more than a century.
To win, Villanueva presented himself to Democratic voters as a progressive reformer and convinced many of his liberal credentials by promising to limit the department’s cooperation in county jails with federal immigration…
Read More: 2022 Los Angeles County sheriff election live results