Photo: PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP / Getty Images
Former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna maintained his lead Friday over current Los Angeles County Sheriff, Alex Villanueva in the race for the position.
Las Updated total figures from Tuesday’s election show Luna with the 62.58% of the votes and Villanueva with the 38.80.
The updated total posted on Friday had Luna with a total of 1200,820 votes and Villanueva with 585,80.
Luna seeks to accomplish a rare feat by ousting an incumbent sheriff.
Villanueva’s victory four years ago over incumbent Jim McDonnell marked he The first time in about a century that a sheriff lost a county re-election bid. But now Villanueva is in danger of suffering the same fate at the hands of Luna.
However, the bailiff expressed his confidence that he would make up for the early voting shortfall as vote counting continues through the next week.
Luna, speaking to supporters in Long Beach Tuesday at night, he noted that the vote count will take a long time, but said he feels good about the direction of the numbers.
“As I’ve met so many people in this great county, there was one thing that was very obvious to me…people were talking about the need for change,” Luna said.
He said that as sheriff, he will be “accountable at the end of the day” and will work to ensure integrity “in the department”.
The candidates ran a spirited campaign, with Luna attacking the incumbent for his torrid relationship with the Board of Supervisors of the given and accusing him of ignoring the issue of sheriff gangs within the department.
Villanueva has deflected such criticism, saying that his battles with the board show that he is a fierce defender of the department and its officers, and insisting that he has done everything possible to attack and ban the alleged cabals in the agency.
Villanueva’s victory four years ago came with strong backing from reformist and Democratic community groups. But in the past four years, Villanueva’s support among those groups has waned, as he repeatedly clashed with the Democratic-dominated Board of Supervisors over funding and policy issues.
He also repeatedly defied subpoenas to appear before the Civil Supervision Commission and refused to enforce the COVID-vaccination mandate between his sheriffs and department employees.
Villanueva’s campaign insists it has worked to restore public confidence in the county’s department sheriff, noting the rollout of body cameras and increasing the minimum requirements for new deputies.
The campaign also boasts that the agency is “ the most diverse in the nation.”
“In his next term, Sheriff Villanueva will work to to reduce violent crime, compassionately clean up homeless encampments, and hold public officials accountable for their actions,” according to his campaign official.
Luna has argued during the campaign that the sheriff’s department is being “mismanaged” by Villanueva and said she will work to restore trust in the agency. He also touted his position as an outsider with no connections to the sheriff’s department.
“Growing up in East Los Angeles, patrolled by the sheriff’s department sheriff, opened my eyes to examples of good and bad cops, and inspired my career as years in law enforcement,” Luna said in a candidate statement.
He said he will work to modernize’ the sheriff’s department and its prison system and improve the mental well-being of officers and employees.
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