Oh, Marred Sheriff

A couple of weeks ago, I read an article about the  Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva who is very right-wring and up for re-election in 2022.  It seems he's decided to quadruple down and go full-on Trump and be as completely right-wing as possible since, I guess, he sees it working so well for Trump, who lost the election and has had his popularity drop after the election, as he's promoted insurrection and pushed the Big Lie.

There are two especially weird things about Mr. Villanueva .

The first is that he has seemed to have forgotten that he's running for reelection in Los Angeles.  Which really isn't Trump country.  How "not Trump country" is it?  My congresswoman Karen Bass won her election with about 89 percent of the vote.  Now, of course, all of Los Angeles is not that much "not Trump country."  But in the district north of mine is Ted Lieu, and he won his election with 67 percent of the vote.  To the east, that district is represented by Adam Schiff -- he won his last race with 73 percent.   And south of that, the district is represented by Maxine Waters, who won in 2020 with 72 percent of the vote

Now again, Los Angeles County is bigger than just that.  But those four districts cover a great deal of the area.  And most other districts in the county are heavily Democratic, as well.  Further, I'm not aware of any that have a GOP representative.  So, I think it's all Democratic, and almost all highly Democratic.

Which doesn't seem the great place to decide to go all right-wing Trump fascist.

To be fair, Mr. Villanueva obviously did win his last race in 2018, which is what made him Los Angeles County Sheriff.  But there wasn't any controversy about him.  He didn't push a fascist agenda, let alone even a far-right one.  He was just a law-and-order candidate for sheriff who had a reasonable background, and beat a first-time sheriff who had some problems.

That brings up the second weird thing about Sheriff Villanueva.

He's a Democrat.  That's how he won in 2018.  It was a big surprise win which make him the first Democrat to be elected sheriff in Los Angeles County in over 138 years!

But for some reason unknown to mankind it's been a U-turn downhill for him since his election.  As Los Angeles magazine describes things, "it is the supposed rightward shift that presents the most interesting election-related twist, in part because Villanueva heavily courted progressive voters three years ago.:

And they go into more detail about that shift, starting with -- "Inauguration day may have been Villanueva’s high point, and calling his tenure rocky almost does a disservice to all the rocks out there."

The magazine notes that he clashed with the city supervisors repeatedly over his attempts to rehire a deputy, who his predecessor had fired because of allegations and an investigation of domestic abuse. 

Los Angeles County tends to re-elect its sheriff.  As in, when Mr. Villanueva won his election, it was the first time in 104 years that an incumbent sheriff had been defeated.  But then, despite those 104 years, the most recent "precedent" -- which is his own election -- is that the voters are willing to go against the incumbent sheriff.  

Who knows what will happens.  He's a Democrat is a highly Democratic county -- who has now seemingly gone all-in right wing Trump fascist.  He seems to have been doing himself his own truckload of damage that will be hard to dig out of -- but we'll see.

And as for seeing, here is an interview he did the other day on CNN.  I'm not sure the point he's trying to make, though I'm not sure if he is either.  He seems to think he's showing how the host Pamela Brown is contradicting herself, except that he is actually supporting her argument which is a pretty easy concept to understand.  As in, the meaning of "unvaccinated."