Election 2022: County Sheriff

The election for county sheriff is about ten months away (next June 7), so the chatter among the chattering class has started.  Mark Simon at the Daily Journal did a full column on the potential of the race a week ago.  His focus was money and race as seen in these couple of snips:

Even before his 2016 appointment by the Board of Supervisors to replace Greg Munks, who resigned in midterm for health reasons, Bolanos had begun raising money for the 2018 election, when he would appear on the ballot for the first time. He raised more than $100,000 in the first half of 2016. By the end of 2017, his campaign fund had more than $250,000 in cash on hand. In the months leading up to the June 2018 election, he raised another $135,000 and entered the last month of the campaign with more than $225,000 in cash on hand. He spent $212,000 for his election.  He did little fundraising in 2020. But at the start of this year, as the next election neared, he raised more than $150,000. At midyear, he had more than $260,000 in his campaign treasury.

There may be some pride in the Latino community that the county’s top law enforcement official is also Latino, but Bolanos has carefully cultivated an image as serving the entirety of the county’s population. He is credited with effective work in the heavily Latino community of North Fair Oaks, but he is not prominently associated with that community.

That column prompted a letter to the DJ from B'game planning commissioner Ray Larios attempting to "clarify things" including asserting that fundraising equals "desperation" and

Mr. Bolanos indeed has raised a large sum of money. However, Mr. Simon omits that most of his campaign funding comes from private interests, retired judges and consultants who reside outside of our county lines.

I'm not going to bother to pull Bolanos' campaign financial filings for three reasons.  First, even if factual, none of those sources of donations give me cause for concern.  Second, building a war chest for a county race is hardly surprising--we are 766,000 people.  Without some context of say a typical county supervisor's fundraising, spending $200K on a countywide race isn't out of line.  Lastly, if any of the challengers could raise that much cash I am sure they would do it in a heartbeat.  Larios finishes his letter with some serious bloviating 

I leave readers with something to consider. Here is a woman who has risen through the ranks as an exceptional officer, commander and community leader in what has been traditionally a male-dominated career. Chief Corpus works twice as hard as her male counterparts and is not concerned about politics.

Christina Corpus is chief-in-title of the "Police Bureau" in Millbrae because Millbrae was too broke to afford its own police department and had to outsource it to the Sheriff's Department years ago.  Bolanos is the one who has been promoting her.  One wonders how a guy who lives in a different town (ours!) would know who is working twice as hard as everyone else?  It's so ridiculous on its face that it begs the question of whether someone with such poor judgement should be in a position of responsibility on the Burlingame Planning Commission?  With advocates like Larios, Corpus is going to need more than a chunk of cash, her gender and her ethnicity to win in San Mateo County.

At least we have ten months to assess the real issues of how the Sheriff's Department has been performing and what every candidate believes should happen in the future.  Can't happen fast enough.

Comments

[Phinancier]

The scuttlebutt on the street is Larios still can't read blueprints so he is shooting in the dark a lot. Same is true of another commissioner, but she adds value by knowing the market and why a developer might be given some latitude.

[[email protected]]

A few years back, maybe ten, a San Mateo County Sheriff was "fired" for partaking in some sort of prostitution "Sting."
Does anyone remember his name?
I do not not know if he and a deputy were guilty or not. I do not care either.
Thank you for any consideration.

[HMB]

Munks and Bolanos both were at the Las Vegas massage parlor operating out of a private home when it was raided as part of Operation Dollhouse in 2012. If I remember correctly, they claimed they had no reason to believe it wasn't a legitimate business (even though there was no name and no signage at the establishment). I believe all they were found guilty of was poor judgment -- and their only penalty profound embarrassment.

[HMB]

Oops -- got the year wrong! https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2007/04/24/sheriff-detained-in-las-vegas-brothel-raid

[HMB]

This article has a photo of the "establishment" -- yeah, this sure looks legit 😂
https://www.kqed.org/news/11670851/hes-not-being-truthful-san-mateo-sheriffs-deputy-running-against-his-boss

[Just another sinner]

Funny how no one actually reads the things Joe links to. Simon reminded everyone that "he was never arrested or detained by police." If his name was Weiner or Newsom or Lieu or Harris this would be buried 12 feet under. Newsom had an affair with his chief of staffs wife and went to rehab. Then had a 12 thousand dollar bar bill at the laundry. Had another affair last year that was buried in the blink of an eye. Maybe it all happened in Vegas.

[HMB]

Funny how people don't read the things Joe links too because they are behind a pay wall. And not everyone is savvy enough to read the story by going to the page's source code.

[Joe]

Thanks, HMB. That is my cue to suggest to everyone that they get a subscription to the Daily Journal. If they are coming to the Voice, they are interested in local affairs and the subscription is $60/year. That a bit over a buck a week!!!!

The second cue is to respectfully ask that we get sort of back on topic. My original premise was that the fundraising of any candidate and their racial make-up should not determine our next sheriff--or any other elected selection.

What is the perception of the sheriff's performance? I never hear anything like what I read down in San Jose (although I give that sheriff points for sticking to her guns). How is the unsolved crime rate in the unincorporated County? (Like Millbrae, LOL). How well is the jail being run? What other criteria are important?

OK?

[Little Maddy Freshmouth]

It looks like the kid who quit the planning commission to move to the middle east for some government job is still here. Maybe being a planning commissioner was too much work. He still has time to write hit piece letters to the paper about the sheriff. https://www.smdailyjournal.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/new-sherriff-in-town-part-two/article_5b909fd8-afdf-11ec-83ca-078ff263481b.html?utm_source=smdailyjournal.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletters%2Fheadlines%2F%3F-dc%3D1648648811&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline

Maybe the paper should double check where Larios really lives.

[Barking Dog]

We should all feel safer that he is "now serving the American people" @ the State Dept.
Clown

[Cassandra]

Thought that smelled fishy hearing that he’d moved away.
If true then this one lie (residency) gives lie to his opinions having merit.

[Joe]

I was not a fan of electing a sheriff with very minimal management experience to run the County's largest department, but the voters saw it differently. Now I kind of feel sorry for Sheriff Corpus, as the lefties come for her with a "citizens oversight committee". Today's DJ indicates the Supes voted for it last night. But yesterday's DJ had an insightful letter disputing the need. Here it is:

Civil grand jury already has Sheriff’s Office oversight

Editor,

I read your Oct. 20 article with interest, “Sheriff Corpus is at odds with oversight plan: Top cop worries subpoena power will harm public safety, hinder recruitment.” It appears that the Board of Supervisors is poised to create a new oversight bureaucracy estimated to cost over $3.5 million, likely to be taken for the Sheriff’s Office budget at a time when there’s been an increase in crime.

It’s especially interesting since the county already has a 19-member, volunteer civilian board tasked with oversight of the Sheriff’s Office and having subpoena power — the San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury. The Civil Grand Jury investigates local government agencies’ effectiveness, efficiency, transparency and integrity, including the Sheriff’s Office.

If citizens have concerns about how the department is run, they can request an investigation. While the civil grand jury confidently (Ed: I think he meant "confidentially") decides what it will investigate, well-thought-out complaints will likely result in an investigation.

There is no good reason for another county board to overlap the civil grand jury and cost $3.5 million. Let the civil grand jury do its job, and let’s spend our money on more pressing needs.

John McDowell

San Carlos

The letter writer is president of the San Mateo County Grand Jurors Association.
--------------------------
Right on. We have a County manager, a Board of Supervisors and a Civil Grand Jury. Why dilute their responsibility with a committee composed of who knows what? The group pushing this is Fixin' SMC. My perusal of their website at https://fixinsmc.org/about/about-us/ would lead me to suggest a renaming to Wreckin' SMC.

[MBGA]

And here's an additional link to read a bit about each member of the board of Fixin' SMC:

https://fixinsmc.org/about/our-board/

Yikes.