The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed a motion Tuesday that could allow them to remove the L.A. County Sheriff virtually at will, ahead of a campaign in which Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who has clashed with the board, is up for reelection.
The motion, which passed 4-1, directs county attorneys to draft a motion that will come before county voters in November. Though a sheriff may only be removed for “cause,” the definition of “cause” is extremely broad and open to interpretation.
According to local radio station KFI, the motion is clearly aimed at Villanueva, who has criticized the Black Lives Matter movement, opposed efforts to “defund the police,” refused to enforce severe coronavirus restrictions on local businesses, resisted vaccine mandates on his officers, and has blasted the supervisors for the county’s problems with homelessness.
Villanueva responded to the board’s efforts on Monday, calling them unconstitutional. He noted that the voters already have a method of removing public officials through recall, and referenced the ongoing recall effort against L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón. He accused the board of trying to replace the will of ten million voters with that of four politicians.
SHERIFF VILLANUEVA’S RESPONSE TO AGENDA #12 – PROMOTING ACCOUNTABILITY AND COMMUNITY SAFETY THROUGH CHECKS AND BALANCES OF THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY SHERIFF pic.twitter.com/9Et5DAD66W
— LA County Sheriffs (@LASDHQ) July 12, 2022
Villanueva is a registered Democrat, though he has been defended by Republicans. In the recent local election, he was the top vote recipient in the primary, with nearly 31% of the vote, though he did not win enough to avoid a runoff.
Democrats in Washington, D.C., had spent much of the day Tuesday accusing former President Donald Trump of “insurrection” due to his effort to challenge the results of the 2020 vote; Democrats in L.A. County were seeking the power to overturn votes.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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