Luna holds lead over Villanueva in Sheriff’s race

LOS ANGELES – Former Long Beach Police Department Chief Robert Luna increased his lead over Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva after Friday’s update in the race to be the county’s next sheriff.

Updated totals from the Tuesday election released Friday by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office showed Luna with now more than 58% of the vote — a slight uptick — and Villanueva with just under 42% — a slight downturn.

The updated count released Friday had Luna with 820,832 votes and Villanueva with 585,164.

Another update is expected to be released Saturday, then every 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,” he told KCAL9 at his Monterey Park election night party Tuesday. “… I think people just want to see the things that matter to them addressed — homelessness and violent crime.”

The candidates ran a spirited campaign, with Luna attacking the incumbent 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.

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.

Villanueva 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.”

“In his next term, Sheriff Villanueva will work to reduce violent crime, compassionately clean up homeless encampments and hold public officials accountable for their actions,” according to his campaign.