San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto and his endorsement of Republican gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco have become the newest shiny objects in the eyes of local political reporters. A deeper look into how it came about reveals what happens when personal and professional relationships become political, as well as how sometimes political endorsements come down to a simple matter of who asks whom first.
It all seemed to start with a Reddit post.
Six days ago, someone finally noticed that Bianco, who has been Riverside County’s elected Sheriff since 2019 and announced his run for California governor back in February, had listed Miyamoto among the 39 of 58 county sheriffs in the state endorsing his candidacy.
The post, by user My_Andrew_Acct, points out Bianco’s affiliations with right-wing law enforcement groups and support for Donald Trump, adding “the man is a nutjob and our sheriff shouldn’t be endorsing him.” Mission Local picks up the story the next day, with a confirming statement by Miyamoto and not much else. Other news outlets then carry the story with a similar tone of incredulity until Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle allows Miyamoto to offer some deeper context.
Miyamoto offered a similar context when he spoke with The Voice last week.
“Of course, I’m still a Democrat,” the sheriff told us in a phone interview. “My mom would kill me if I were to change…. My perspective on this is that I have known Chad as a county sheriff, we work together on the state sheriff association, he’s been a friend to me since I was first elected.”
“I definitely will be supporting Democratic candidates for different offices, up to probably governor, when we figure out who’s going to be in the lead there.”
That probably tracks with why at least some of the other 38 county sheriffs have endorsed Bianco. He’s one of eight declared higher-profile Republican candidates to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom in a historically Democratic stronghold state, with at least eight even-higher-profile Democrats also in the running.
He’s something of a quixotic figure who laid out his rationale for endorsing Trump in a social media rant where he explains that what he sees as years of feckless criminal justice policy coming out of Sacramento drove him to a “go big or go home” position where he can say “it’s time to put a felon in the White House.”
That frustration probably also drove Bianco’s high-profile support for Proposition 36, the recent voter-mandated rollback of lenient criminal justice policies enacted by Proposition 47 back in 2014. He even called out Vice President Harris’s silence on the measure, which passed with almost 70 percent of the vote.
That context doesn’t seem too different from that of some other politicians who, out of frustration over some of the worst aspects of political establishment intransigence over public safety or fiscal accountability policies, end up passing out MAGA hats to their colleagues on their last day in office or using the specter of Elon Musk and Donald Trump as a warning to colleagues to watch out for the buyers’ remorse of voters.
But sometimes endorsement decisions boil down to something as simple as who asks who first, and this may well have been the case with Miyamoto and Bianco, whose primary relationship is through the California State Sheriff’s Association (CSSA).
“I have been a member of CSSA since I became sheriff, and sitting at the table there, bringing the perspective of a San Franciscan with progressive values as a sheriff to that table has been beneficial, so that, you know, there’s a balance,” Miyamoto told The Voice, adding:
You know, he just asked anybody at one of our meetings, I think it was he said, ‘anyone who wants to sign a letter to support, please do.’ I don’t remember the exact number, but I think it was around 37 of us who signed it. So that’s the one time I did something; I haven’t contributed money or anything like that, but I’m signed on to support him, and I’m not trying to nuance anything. I do know that that means an endorsement, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m endorsing a peer and a friend.
The sheriff also added that he had spoken to local Democratic Party leadership on the matter as well.
“I definitely will be supporting Democratic candidates for different offices, up to probably governor, when we figure out who’s going to be in the lead there.”
