This sheriff crossed a line pandering to Trump. He should pay, from his own pocket
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For a time, Chad Bianco was one of the front-runners in the race for California governor — or at least as front-runnery as a Republican can get in this cobalt-blue state.
Polling in the primary showed the Riverside County sheriff drawing support in roughly the mid-teens, which — while nothing to shout about — was still enough in a jumbo-sized field to place Bianco among the top contenders.
His main rival among Republicans was Fox talk-show host Steve Hilton. The question was which of the two GOP hopefuls would President Trump bless, ensuring their advancement to certain defeat in November. That made their competition a bit like jousting for the last berth on the sinking Titanic, or elbowing for the opportunity to go before a firing squad.
But whatever.
Bianco, being a sheriff outfitted with a badge and gun and all, played his Trump card, mindful of the president’s monomaniacal obsession with nonexistent voter fraud. Acting on flimsy pretenses, Bianco arranged in February for the seizure of hundreds of thousands of Proposition 50 ballots, questioning the integrity of the election months after the fact.
Never mind that Riverside County voters approved the Democratic gerrymandering measure by a comfortable margin. Hitching himself to the president’s favorite hobbyhorse, Bianco’s performative policing was an obvious attempt to curry favor with the nation’s election denier in chief.
Alas for Bianco, the ploy didn’t work. Trump endorsed Hilton, who finished second in the June primary and was predictably crushed Tuesday by California’s governor-elect, Xavier Becerra.
Democrat Xavier Becerra defeated Republican Steve Hilton and will become California’s next governor, according to a race call by the Associated Press.
Now the bill has come due.
Not surprisingly, Bianco’s unlawful actions resulted in litigation. Lawsuits brought by California’s attorney general and UCLA’s Voting Rights Project went all the way to the state Supreme Court, which scorched the sheriff in a September decision calling his actions illegal, perplexing and “a substantial risk to election integrity.”
Naturally, that legal skirmishing cost money, so Bianco asked the county Board of Supervisors to pony up and pay the bills arising from all his sheriffy swaggering, ballot confiscating and Trump pandering. The board said no, in a 4-1 vote in April. So last month, Bianco filed a claim seeking damages.
“If the County rejects the claim, Sheriff Bianco will have the right to sue the County ... which he intends to do,” Bradley Hertz, Bianco’s attorney, wrote in an email to Times reporter Iris Kwok. Bianco’s actions, Hertz said, “arose out of his official actions.”
Which they most certainly did, if one defines “official actions” as going before a judge who touted Bianco’s endorsement when he ran and securing a warrant based on the claims of nutty political activists, all so Bianco could promote his political interests and advance his long-shot run for governor.
Does Bianco have a leg to stand on?
“In California, officers are entitled both to the cost of representation and to settlements and judgments against them for conduct in the course and scope of their employment,” said Joanna Schwartz, a professor at UCLA Law School and an expert on indemnification and qualified immunity, to use the legal terms. “How that gets sorted out in individual cases depends.”
Which suggests the case of Bianco vs. the County of Riverside will very likely wind up before a judge. (And result in more needless, court-clogging litigation.)
One of the most insidious aspects of Trump’s ruinous rule is the use of public office, taxpayer dollars and the color of authority to advance the president’s personal and political self-interests.
His thoroughly corrupted Justice Department blatantly acted to subvert Tuesday’s balloting. His Interior Department installed new signage in national parks to present Trump’s whitewashed version of history. His Federal Communications Commission has persecuted TV networks and sought to muzzle late-night comedians who bruise the president’s ever-so-fragile feelings.
And on it goes.
Presidents typically lose congressional seats in the midterm election, but Trump put himself front and center like no other. The verdict from voters was thunderous and clear.
Judges around the country, that thin, black-robed line of defense, have repeatedly pushed back on Trump’s false election claims. And they’ve sanctioned some who’ve used their office or breached the rules of professional conduct to aid and abet the president’s reckless attempts to despoil our democracy.
Tina Peters, the former Colorado elections clerk who allowed tampering with her county’s election machinery in a harebrained scheme to show the 2020 election was “rigged,” received a stiff prison term and served 20 months before Gov. Jared Polis commuted her sentence and freed Peters to cause more mischief.
Attorneys have been fined and sanctioned for peddling Trump’s stolen election claptrap and presidential factotums Rudolph W. Giuliani and John Eastman were disbarred for their efforts to overturn the 2020 result. Giuliani was also slapped with a $148-million libel verdict for smearing two election workers in Georgia.
Despite those sanctions, the administration continues pressing phony claims of rampant voter fraud. Although Tuesday’s vote went smoothly and Trump accepted the results — as well he should — more of his enablers need to be held to account, as a means of deterrence. That’s a concept that Bianco, a law enforcement professional, surely understands.
There’s a saying in the retail industry, dealing with those who damage the merchandise: You break it, you buy it.
Grasping to advance his political ambitions, Bianco recklessly used and abused his authority as county sheriff to vandalize California’s election system and betray the public trust.
He broke it, he owns it.
Now Bianco needs to pay up.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- The column argues that Sheriff Chad Bianco used his office to advance his political ambitions by seizing hundreds of thousands of Proposition 50 ballots based on weak allegations of fraud, rather than a substantiated threat to election integrity. The California Supreme Court later ruled the seizure unlawful.[3][5]
- It contends that public funds should not shield Bianco from the legal costs of conduct that, in the column’s view, abused his authority and damaged public trust. Its “you break it, you buy it” argument treats personal financial responsibility as both accountability and a deterrent.
- The column also places Bianco’s actions in a broader pattern of public officials using government authority and taxpayer resources to serve political interests, and argues that sanctions are needed to discourage similar conduct.
Different views on the topic
- Bianco’s attorney argues that the lawsuits arose from the sheriff’s official duties and that California law requires the county to cover his legal expenses. The attorney says that disputes over the legality of investigative steps do not, by themselves, show that Bianco acted outside his job.[1]
- Bianco has defended the ballot inquiry as a criminal investigation into alleged irregularities, saying the warrant was obtained through the ordinary process and that the judge’s past praise of him was coincidental.[5]
- There is also a procedural and legal dispute over reimbursement, separate from whether the ballot seizure was lawful. The UCLA Voting Rights Project argues that Bianco hired private counsel without first seeking the county’s approval, while his attorney maintains that the county must pay; the Supreme Court rulings on the seizure did not resolve that reimbursement question.[2][4]
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