With Duffy Out, It’s a Wide-Open Race for Sheriff : Election: The strategy will change markedly as the field of candidates tries to find a new campaign focus.

By deciding not to seek reelection, San Diego County Sheriff John Duffy has dramatically altered the complexion of next year’s race, changing it from a referendum on his controversial stewardship to a confusing scramble among a handful of candidates whose major target is suddenly gone.

Within political circles, Duffy’s unexpected announcement Monday that he will retire when his term expires in January, 1991, was seen as the electoral equivalent of sharply flicking a gyroscope with one’s finger--an action that abruptly shifted the campaign’s axis, sending it careening off in wildly unpredictable directions.

“With Big John gone, it’s a whole new game,” said political consultant Jack Orr, who is managing the campaign of former San Diego Police Chief Ray Hoobler. “Now, you could flip a coin five ways and still not be able to predict who’s going to be sheriff. This thing is wide, wide open.”

The immediate impact of Duffy’s withdrawal will be to force the three announced sheriff candidates--each of whom has sharply criticized Duffy and planned to keep him in their rhetorical cross hairs throughout the campaign--to quickly rethink their strategies.

At the same time, each realizes that his chances of qualifying for a November runoff have been improved--for statistical if not political reasons--by the removal of Duffy, whose countywide name recognition easily eclipsed that of his would-be challengers.

Orr also speculated that Duffy’s decision could lessen public interest in the race by relegating its most colorful figure to the sidelines.

“Duffy’s removed a lot of the fire for this race,” Orr conceded. “If he ran, we were going to see some good aerial fights. Now we’re down to trench warfare.”

The potential effect of Duffy’s endorsement Monday of one of his three assistant sheriffs, Jack Drown, was also briskly debated, with the consensus being that Drown perhaps has more to lose than gain from the sheriff’s backing. Already closely identified with Duffy, Drown--who plans to formally announce his candidacy in several weeks--could be seriously damaged if he is perceived to be the handpicked successor of a sheriff who is leaving office enveloped in controversy, campaign consultants said.

“Does this guy want to win ?” consultant David Lewis, whose firm is not involved in the race, asked when told that Drown welcomed Duffy’s endorsement. “At this point, I’d be real (reluctant) about taking any help from Duffy. At the very least, I’d have wanted to wait until later in the race to see how the public’s feeling about him.”

While Drown tries to quickly organize a race that he thought was at least four years away--a timetable based on his expectation that Duffy would seek reelection--Hoobler and the two other announced candidates began assessing Monday how Duffy’s decision affects their candidacies.

No longer able to bill themselves simply as an alternative to Duffy, the three--Hoobler, Sheriff’s Capt. Jim Roache and Escondido Police Chief Vince Jimno--must now develop a plan to make their candidacies compelling, a task made much more difficult by the removal of their foil. In short, each must repackage his own positive attributes for the job rather than simply hope to capitalize on the anybody-but-Duffy sentiment that had been expected to be a dominant theme in next year’s campaign.

Without Duffy in the race, the candidates “will not have the opportunity . . . to address the performance of the incumbent,” Hoobler said.

“The obvious target is gone,” Lewis added. “They’re all going to have to refocus and find other things to talk about. At the same time, there still are plenty of problems in the Sheriff’s Department--the jails, the low morale--to discuss. But, with Duffy out of it, a lot of the emotion from that debate is gone, too.”

In announcing that he will not seek an unprecedented sixth four-year term, Duffy displayed the same public bravado, cockiness and caustic disdain for his critics that typified much of his tenure as the county’s top law-enforcement officer. Despite growing dissatisfaction with his performance--as reflected in a Times poll last spring in which only 28% of those surveyed favored his reelection--Duffy predicted Monday that he could have easily defeated the “jackals” planning to challenge him next year.

“I believe very strongly that I could defeat any and all of the jackals who haven’t the courage to kill their own prey but rely upon others to provide them something to feed upon,” Duffy said at a morning news conference in his downtown office.

Asked to identify the “jackals,” Duffy added: “Vincent Jimno, who said he would never run for sheriff until after I’ve retired. Now he tells me he thinks that I’m weakened, and it’s a good time for him to run. Roache is the same way. They’re jackals--the lowest animal in the jungle. They’re worse than vultures.”

Roache could not be reached for comment Monday, but Jimno said he doubts that Duffy’s acrimony is “anything to worry about” in his campaign. Similarly, Hoobler consultant Orr suggested that being singled out for criticism from Duffy “might not be a bad thing” for those seeking to succeed him, whereas his endorsement poses some thorny questions.

“The question is, is this an endorsement you really want?” Orr asked rhetorically. “After all, it’s coming from a guy who’s not leaving under the best of circumstances.”

Drown, however, said at his own news conference Monday that Duffy’s endorsement “is not an evil thing,” adding that he is not concerned about being tainted by his close association with the sheriff.

“I don’t see it as a problem,” Drown said. “I’m encouraged by the fact that the man I’ve worked for for going on 21 years has that kind of confidence in me. Certainly, I’m not going to shun his support, there’s no question about that.”

Much of the recent criticism of Duffy, Drown said, has “focused not so much on the operations of the department (as on Duffy’s) personal style, his relations with other elected officials, his relations with . . . the media.”

Duffy’s level of involvement in his campaign, Drown said, is “something that I have to leave up to him.” Pressed on whether he will ask Duffy to play a high-visibility role in the race, Drown added: “I would not reject John Duffy’s support. I’d say, whatever you can do for me, I’d welcome.”

Jimno, however, speculated that any association with Duffy could be a liability for any candidate next year--particularly so for Drown.

Making the case for his own candidacy as an “outsider . . . with a proven track record,” Jimno, who became Escondido’s chief in 1987 after seven years as Carlsbad’s police chief, argued that Roache, too, could face tough questions simply by virtue of his service under Duffy--even though he has been one of the sheriff’s most vocal internal critics.

“A major concern for voters is going to be whether these other candidates are cut from the same cloth or have been trained to do things in the same way over the past 20 years,” said Jimno, who has taken a leave of absence to campaign for sheriff and now is acting as a paid consultant to the Escondido Police Department. “The fact that I’m outside the department is a definite advantage.”

Hoobler, too, can make the same claim, but even his own consultant conceded Monday that Duffy’s departure from the race so thoroughly changes the campaign’s dynamics as to make any hypotheses about an election that is still six months away rather hazardous.

Having said that, however, Orr speculated that Duffy’s exit could make fund raising a stiffer challenge for the remaining candidates. Many potential contributors, he said, perhaps cared more about seeing Duffy replaced than about which candidate did so--and feel they have already accomplished that goal without needing to open their pocketbooks.

“At this point, most people can say, ‘Problem solved--thorn removed,’ ” Orr said. “For them, the campaign’s over, in a way. But for the rest of us, it’s just beginning.”