Commentary: This sheriff crossed a line pandering to Trump. He should pay, from his own pocket – Los Angeles Times

Commentary: This sheriff crossed a line pandering to Trump. He should pay, from his own pocket  Los Angeles Times

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