Villanueva a bad fit for Board of Supes
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em would appear to be the current political motto for ousted former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who announced last week that he intends to run in the March 2024 primary against incumbent county Supervisor Janice Hahn.
It's a fool's errand. During his four calamitous years of overseeing law enforcement in the county, Villanueva showed himself to be the kind of organizational manager who is simply incapable of working well with others. In his case, the others very much included the members of the Board of Supervisors, all five of whose attempts to both be collaborative with him and to exercise some supervision over him were met with disdain by the renegade sheriff.
That failure to understand that his job was not on the order of a one-man band surely is one of the several reasons county voters shellacked Villanueva's re-election effort, handing an overwhelming 61% to 37% victory to current Sheriff Robert Luna, whose calm, plain, non-egotistical management style is a welcome relief for all Angelenos.
When he was sheriff, Villanueva at least five times refused to respond to lawful subpoenas by the supervisors and their Civilian Oversight Commission, which is supposed to be a watchdog over the sheriff. His refusal was also a clear insult to Los Angeles County voters, who in a ballot measure creating the body gave the commission the power to subpoena the sheriff — “without condition,” as Frank Stolze of LAist noted last year.
The commission wanted his sworn testimony about the deputy gangs whose decades of disservice harmed law enforcement in the county, and about the investigative unit he formed that harassed the sheriff's critics. Villanueva instead clammed up, claiming that the will of the people and of the elected supervisors was “an abuse of power.”
Let's also not forget Villanueva's bizarre insistence early on in his term as sheriff on rehiring former deputy Caren Carl Mandoyan, who was fired amid domestic violence and stalking allegations.
Villanueva is precisely the wrong kind of politician to be elected to join a deliberative body. His tin-pot dictatorial style did not serve the Sheriff's Department at all well, and we are confident voters will reject his candidacy once again.