[August 15, 2019 update: The Los Angeles County Democratic Party is expressing buyer’s remorse over its 2018 endorsement of Alex Villanueva. On August 13, the party passed a resolution calling on the Sheriff “to restore the public’s trust in the Sheriff’s Department.”]

Last year Alex Villanueva was a surprise winner against the incumbent in the race to become the new sheriff of Los Angeles County. I don’t live in LA so I’ve followed this only from afar, but as near as I can tell Villanueva’s main goal in office is to rehire deputies who have been fired for a variety of offenses, including unreasonable force, domestic violence, lying, and so forth. He started off with a couple of rehires, then announced six more, and apparently the total is now up to a couple of dozen or so.— Kevin Drum, “LA Sheriff Really Hates It When Bad Folks Get Fired.“

Drum points to Villanueva’s pledge to kick ICE out of the county jails, which engendered broad support among Hispanic voters, as the key to his victory, then he adds:

So far he’s kind of done that and kind of hasn’t, but in any case his top priority by far has been a so-called “truth and reconciliation” committee whose job is to reinstate fired deputies and make it clear that everyone knows the good old days are back.

As a Los Angeles County voter, I can confirm Drum’s impression. (The article Drum cites, “Sheriff’s chief says she quit over ‘highly unethical’ demand to rehire deputy fired for abuse,” reports a new revelation: a week before Villanueva was sworn in, his incoming chief of staff asked the department’s chief of professional standards to alter retroactively the disciplinary records for Caren Carl Mandolyn, fired after a string of misconduct incidents, because the new Sheriff’s “No. 1 priority” was to reinstate him, which he has done.)

I watched, with interest and dismay, the 2018 campaign for sheriff play out over many months. That campaign connects to issues—such as partisanship, group interests within a broad coalition, shortcuts used by voters, and opposition to Trump and Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies—related to the themes of this blog. Without further ado, here are some observations by your fearless editor (who follows local politics mostly by reading the Los Angeles Times and listening to Southern California Public Radio):

The County of Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is an imposing fiefdom for (whomever happens to be) the Sheriff, who is independently elected and substantially free of meaningful oversight by the County Board of Supervisors (which oversees virtually everything else in county government). LASD patrols unincorporated areas of the county and more than three dozen cities, provides security for the county courthouse (Superior Court), and runs the massive county jail system. (Note: LAPD, the Los Angeles Police Department, which has jurisdiction within the City of Los Angeles, is a separate agency from LASD.)

The Sheriff’s Department is huge, insular, and—both within the county jail and out on the streets—the department has had more than its share of “problem deputies” and a widely discussed history of scandals.  

Jim McDonnell—a former high ranking officer at LAPD, who left to become Chief of Police in Long Beach—ran for sheriff after his predecessor, Lee Baca, who portrayed himself as a reformer, was caught up in a scandal that resulted in a prison sentence (though Baca is out on bail while appealing his conviction). McDonnell won election in 2014 (defeating Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, now in prison) and, while the controversies swirling around LASD didn’t disappear, the sheriff seemed me to be doing a credible job in his first term. 

Sheriff McDonnell was, however, a former Republican in a Democratic stronghold. While the office of sheriff is nonpartisan, and while McDonnell had dropped his Republican registration, 2018 was not a good year for Republicans (or unaffiliated former Republicans) running in Los Angeles County, which has the greatest concentration of Democrats in the nation’s most revved up blue state.

It’s safe to say that McDonnell was unprepared for a competitive reelection bid in 2018. McDonnell had ample funds to conduct a campaign and his endorsements included a number of prominent Democrats, such as L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and County Supervisor Hilda Solis, as well as District Attorney Jackie Lacey and the Los Angeles Times editorial board, but—perhaps because going back more than a century, no incumbent sheriff had lost an election in Los Angeles County—he was caught flatfooted. His campaign, which acted as though he could coast to victory, was clearly outmatched by Villanueva’s effort.

Alex Villanueva hustled. He met with community groups, attended forums (which McDonnell often conspicuously declined to attend), and emphatically embraced a reform agenda (while doling out large portions of contempt for the incumbent sheriff). His promises:

• Reform the LASD by cleaning house, top to bottom, and raising standards across the board
• Rebuild the organization around the principles of community policing
• Restore trust that has been lost between the community and the LASD, and within the LASD itself.

Sounds good. Nonetheless, I didn’t find Villanueva to be a credible candidate, because he lacked leadership experience (he had never risen above the rank of Lieutenant after 3 decades in the Sheriff’s Department); he had never held public office, or taken a leadership role in immigration rights, or shown any other evidence of being a trustworthy agent of change; his rhetorical salvos directed at McDonnell and ICE often didn’t seem to bear close scrutiny; and—this was the critical point—Villanueva locked arms with the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS), the deputies’ union—a tenacious opponent of deputy accountability and implacable foe of reforming the institutional culture within LASD—which bankrolled his campaign.

I wasn’t the only critic who was not persuaded. Steve Martin, former mayor of West Hollywood (one of the cities where LASD patrols) and former president of the Stonewall Democratic Club (ironically, a prominent backer of Villanueva in 2018), who has a long history of advocating progressive reform of LASD, articulated his objections to Villanueva in an op-ed the week before the election. (Although I didn’t see this op-ed last November, it lays out a clear case for opposing Villanueva’s candidacy.)

Martin notes Villanueva and ALADS’s opposition to McDonnell’s commitment to cooperate with the District Attorney’s office in investigating more than 300 problem deputies. He references Villanueva’s attacks on McDonnell’s cooperation with ICE, but notes that this cooperation is governed by California’s sanctuary state law (no matter who heads LASD), that Villanueva’s differences with McDonnel (when examined closely) were sometimes negligible, and that—once in office—there would be significant limits (in contrast to his over the top rhetoric) on what policy changes he could actually bring about.

Most significantly, Martin highlights ALADS’s role in fighting reform:

Over the years it has been obvious that ALADS, the union representing the rank and file deputies, has been a consistent opponent to reform.… A Villanueva administration would give us the same sort of window dressing we saw under the Baca/Tanaka regime, with little meaningful change. Electing a relatively low ranking former deputy backed by a union that opposes deputy accountability, is not a receipt for reform.

I was flummoxed as I watched the campaign unfold. It was understandable why immigrant rights groups and other opponents of Trump’s disgraceful anti-immigrant policies would focus on Villanueva’s criticism of ICE, but what about civil rights, social justice, and prison reform concerns more generally? Deputy misconduct (on a force where out-of-policy misbehavior is widely recognized) was overlooked. Why did the Democratic Party go all-in for this guy?

I believe the answer is that Villanueva ticked off all the right boxes in his campaign. (Just as important: McDonnell’s campaign failed to offer a convincing rebuttal to Villanueva. As noted above: McDonnell’s campaign seemed to think they could ride the advantages of incumbency to reelection, while Sheriff McDonnell even boycotted community forums, instead of meeting and communicating with voters.) Consider:

Villanueva campaigned (mostly under the radar of the L.A. Times) for Latinx support throughout the county. (“He will be the first sheriff to speak Spanish since 1888.”)

He campaigned in African American neighborhoods as well and gained significant support. The Sheriff’s Department has not been much-beloved in many neighborhoods.

He ran as a reform candidate and critic of LASD’s past leadership. (“He was also the founder of an organization dedicated to fighting against the administrative corruption of Sheriff Lee Baca and Paul Tanaka.”)

He pledged to double down on community policing. (“He will establish community policing countywide, hire additional deputies to keep our streets safe, and have a local pipeline to create diversity in the department. He wants to ensure the County Sheriff’s Department is transparent and available for all residents of Los Angeles County.”)

And of course he ran against ICE.

But most of all, he ran as a Democrat:

It has been 138 years since our last Democratic Sheriff. In order to protect our communities and our families we need to elect a Democrat for Sheriff.

This November, help make history. Elect a Democrat for Sheriff.
Vote Democrat for LA County Sheriff. Vote Alex Villanueva.

The image above (a screen grab from Fox 11 News) is from a Villanueva campaign brochure. Though most voters probably couldn’t have picked Jim McDonnell out of a lineup, the pairing of the Sheriff and Trump aimed to make an impression they would remember.

Two factors, in my view, were especially powerful in this campaign: The first, was linking McDonnell to Trump’s immigration policies and pledging to distance the department from ICE. The second, more significant factor was the Democratic Party endorsement. Note that there was no indication on the ballot that Villanueva was a Democrat, since this office is nonpartisan. But his affiliation was conveyed by his campaign at every opportunity: on his website, in his literature, on door hangers, mailed brochures, and social media, in Democratic club voter guides, and in many stories in the press, on radio, and TV: Villanueva was the Democratic candidate for sheriff.

Voters rely on cues to make decisions. Jonathan Bernstein has pointed out that even well informed voters are not “remotely qualified” to make independent judgments about the large number and range of issues they are asked to vote on. That’s why we “take the shortcuts” that are available to us. We look at a range of trusted sources —officials, groups, others who master the nitty-gritty details we have no time or expertise to delve into—to come to an understanding and make decisions. And, as Bernstein notes, among the cues available to us: “The biggest one is party affiliation.”

So, in Democratic Los Angeles County, voters turned out an experienced incumbent to make Alex Villanueva the Sheriff.

On his first day in office the new sheriff, who had repeatedly clashed with his superiors during his 30-year tenure at LASD, immediately removed the top 18 executives in the department and required 500 supervisors to reapply for their positions, creating more questions about Villanueva’s judgment and priorities. More alarmingly, he eliminated two constitutional policing positions created by McDonnell to advise the sheriff on use of force and disciplinary matters.  

Aside from his unconventional approach to management, thus far Villanueva has presided over an LASD that looks pretty much what the department looked like in the bad old days, as a recent headline suggests, “Cop group with matching skull tattoos costs taxpayers $7 million in fatal shooting.” Are the secret societies that deputies join, groups that feature: names such as Banditos, Jump Out Boys, Grim Reapers, and Regulators; matching tattoos (skulls and guns are popular); gang signs exchanged by the deputies; and accusations of links to unlawful behavior on the street and in the county jail—as well as violence, harassment, and bullying directed at deputies who haven’t joined the cliques—a problem that demands a sheriff’s attention? Or, as Villanueva suggested, is the issue no more serious than intergenerational “hazing” (a bonding experience to create esprit de corps among deputies, perhaps)?

At this point, with each new story of the direction that the new sheriff is taking the department, progressive criticism has begun to appear. And, it turns out that critics of Villanueva’s anti-ICE rhetoric and his promise to “physically remove” ICE agents from the jails were right: within federal law and California’s sanctuary law, the Sheriff’s Department has only limited leeway. “While Villanueva has indeed banned uniformed ICE agents from the jails he has replaced them with private contractors, which critics have called a distinction without a difference.”

After Bernstein’s comment on the primacy of party affiliation, he adds: “If the party endorses a candidate, you have a good idea how that person will behave in office.”

That’s where I think the local Democratic Party, and all those Democratic clubs, failed Democratic voters. They didn’t foresee Villanueva’s “main goal in office” (as Kevin Drum put it). Why not? I don’t think they were looking very hard. Not in 2018.

The Democratic Party is a coalition of social groups. The Democratic agenda emerges from the separate agendas of those groups. Sometimes there are disagreements among constituencies, but often there are groups with standing in the party that can lead on issues within their province. Such groups have, in Jo Freeman’s words, “policy sovereignty over a policy territory and can generally designate those issues and positions within it that are to be part of the party line.” The immigration rights groups in 2018 had standing to dictate the party line: unequivocal opposition to ICE.

And, of course, their position was fortified by another Democratic group: the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. ALADS is a public employee union and as such is a part of the Democratic coalition. While the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association (PPOA), which represents LASD supervisors, endorsed McDonnell, a number of other Los Angeles unions joined ALADS in supporting Villanueva. (Competing endorsements from organized labor didn’t seem to be especially significant in this race.)

Immigration activists took Villanueva at his word. They pushed for a sheriff whom they regarded as committed to their agenda. No other Democratic groups had reason to object to this agenda and furthermore no other issues were as prominent during the 2018 campaign.

All other concerns related to LASD—the use of unreasonable force, domestic violence, abuse of prisoners in county jail, outlaw cliques at LASD stations, and holding deputies accountable for misconduct—were more or less submerged. ICE, on the other hand, was a hot issue. So concerns with ICE carried the day.

It’s a testament to Trump’s extremely hateful policies and the degree of harm he has inflicted that activists were not more wary of Alex Villanueva: a man with no track record to show that he was up to job or that he could be trusted to serve the public faithfully. (It’s also additional evidence of McDonnell’s feckless campaign that these concerns failed to become live issues.)

While I believe that Jim McDonnell is a man of integrity, who was pursuing a genuine reform agenda and would have steadfastly tracked California’s sanctuary law (as Villanueva has done), the local Democratic Party disagreed with me (and convinced most voters as well).

One could, of course, decide that the relatively modest changes vis-à-vis LASD and ICE that Villanueva has implemented outweigh the issue of deputy accountability at the department. It is possible to decide that on balance this is the right choice. Immigrant rights activists may reasonably hold this view.

But the fact that a number of progressives are reassessing their judgments about the new sheriff, as well as their silence or muted objections in 2018 suggest that Democratic endorsements of Villanueva were not grounded on a balancing of interests. Instead, the urgency of opposing Trump and ICE took precedence, precluding a well-grounded evaluation of the man who is now our sheriff.

Democratic dominance in Los Angeles, Democrats’ fierce resistance to Trump and commitment to immigrants, in the absence of meaningful countervailing factors in 2018, has resulted in the election of a sheriff who is squelching reform and accountability at LASD. Public safety and trust in law enforcement are casualties.