Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva formally announced Sept. 13 he is running for the District 4 seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
He will face incumbent Janice Hahn in the March 2024 primary.
“The Board of Supervisors had a responsibility to provide for the health, safety, and welfare of the county and all of its residents,” Mr. Villanueva said in the Wednesday press conference announcing his candidacy. ”In that regard, [members of the current board] have failed absolutely. I cannot find a measure of success in any activity the board is engaged in.”
Several of the county’s biggest issues that he will be targeting in his campaign, Mr. Villanueva said, include crime, safety, homelessness, and what he called “county corruption.”
“All these things really come to the forefront because of the decisions from the five members of the board,” he said. “They’re spending $44 billion of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and you have no idea where the money is being spent.”
Regarding his campaign slogan “SAVE LA 2024,” Mr. Villanueva said that it is time to “turn the ship around. We don’t want to become the doom loop, like San Francisco is going through right now. We’ve seen that already.”
He later told The Epoch Times it is important to change how the county government is dealing with homelessness issues because bad policies are creating an open door inviting such a population from all over the country to move to Los Angeles.
“The entire homeless policy is based on ideology. It’s not based on facts, reality, and human nature,” Mr. Villanueva said in an interview. “When you enable dependency, and you normalize deviancy, people are going to take advantage of it. They’re going to come to L.A. to smoke dope and basically defecate on the sidewalk in front of kids.”
Additionally, he said that the growing homeless issue goes “hand in hand” with the rising crime rate.
“Prop 47 needs to be repealed. We need to revert back to a standard on law and order, and we have to reassert that with law enforcement on the streets and DA in the court,” he said.
In 2014, California passed Proposition 47, which raised the felony limit of property theft from $400 to $950. The law also removed the provision for petty theft with a prior offense, which had previously enabled prosecutors to elevate charges to felonies for repeat offenders.
“The county has fallen apart as we watch, and I cannot stand by in good conscience and watch my own community suffer because of bad career politicians,” he said.
The former sheriff also received support from fellow law enforcement.
“We have to start uniting, and this man will bring us together. … protect us, and get the county back to what it was,” said retired Montebello Police Department Chief Garry Couso-Vasquez at the press conference.
Mr. Villanueva is seeking to challenge the all-female board since 2020 when Mark Ridley-Thomas—who, after leaving the board, was convicted in March of federal bribery and conspiracy charges—was unable to seek reelection due to term limits.
He served as the Los Angeles County Sheriff for one term, securing the position by winning against then-sheriff Jim McDonnell in the 2018 election. He lost the seat to former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna during last year’s November election.
Ms. Hahn was elected in 2016 and subsequently reelected in 2020 to represent the 4th District—which encompasses an area stretching from the Palos Verdes Peninsula to Long Beach and extending northward to southeastern Los Angeles County and the eastern San Gabriel Valley, including Huntington Park, Bell, Commerce, Pico Rivera, Whittier, and La Habra Heights.
Her father, Kenneth Hahn, was a supervisor from 1952 to 1992, and the county’s Hall of Administration was named after him.
In response to an email from City News Service, Ms. Hahn’s campaign consultant, Dave Jacobson, stated that “L.A. County became less safe under Villanueva’s reign. … He is a fraud and a failure and L.A. County voters won’t be fooled again.”
Also running for the District 4 seat is John Cruikshank, mayor pro tem of Rancho Palos Verdes.
Supervisors Holly Mitchell of District 2 and Kathryn Barger of District 5 are also facing reelection in 2024.
