LOCAL ELECTIONS: COUNTY SHERIFF : Lame Duck Duffy Still Powerful Influence in Race for His Office

Six months after he quit the race for San Diego County sheriff, John Duffy’s ghost still lingers.

For his knighted successor, Jack Drown, the omen is a mixed blessing. It has given him access to Duffy’s considerable fund-raising network.

The other four candidates in next month’s primary election hope that Duffy’s specter will prove deadly to Drown as voters consider the first open San Diego County sheriff’s race in 20 years. They are banking on a widespread perception among voters that Duffy and his department have been arrogant and inaccessible.

An assistant sheriff who 10 years ago gained Duffy’s good favor and won a series of promotions, Drown is well aware of the double-edged sword.

“It’s somewhat of a dilemma for me,” he said. “But look, what does a John Duffy endorsement mean? It means that he believes I’m the person who has the quality and skills and background to lead the department. It also means that he views what I have done in the department as successful.

“And yet I don’t think anyone has ever heard John Duffy say Jack Drown is his mirror image.”

The other candidates--Jim Roache, Vince Jimno, Ray Hoobler and Jim Messenger--have been saying that for months.

“Jack Drown was cultivated and groomed within the organization by John Duffy and is now endorsed by him,” said Roache, a sheriff’s captain.

“He has been part of the high-level decision making and has to bear some of the direct accountability for the policy and direction of this department over the last five to seven years.”

Hoobler, a former San Diego police chief, is more graphic: “When a young man emulates his father, they say the acorn doesn’t fall very far from the tree. Well, Jack Drown hasn’t fallen very far from John Duffy.”

Duffy is leaving the Sheriff’s Department at a crucial juncture.

The county grand jury last year determined that inmates were being improperly abused by deputies. The jails are choked and overcrowded, and a series of jail breaks have alarmed residents in Chula Vista and El Cajon. Staff morale is low, particularly with deputies working without a contract since January.

The mistaken, fatal shooting of a Vista man by sheriff’s deputies has led to criticism of the department because of the slow response to questions about the shooting.

Duffy’s management style has been sharply criticized as arrogant, aloof and distracted. Although Duffy is no longer a candidate, the five contenders who want his job feel his presence nonetheless.

In order to win on the June 5 ballot a candidate would have to win a majority of the vote. More likely, there will be a runoff between the top two vote-getters.

The candidates:

JACK DROWN--Duffy announced he was pulling out of the race on a December morning. By noon, Drown announced his candidacy.

Forty-three years old and a 20-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Department, Drown feels assured he will survive the primary. But from Day 1 of his candidacy, he has had to grapple with the meaning of his first endorsement: Duffy.

Nikki Symington, his campaign consultant, said Duffy “is doing what John does best. He is raising money from very strong Duffy supporters.”

In a series of letters on behalf of Drown, Duffy recalls past campaigns and hails himself and his staunch supporters as being “like the old sheriff and his posse of citizens working together.” He also invites them to “attend a victory party after the election with the new sheriff, Jack, and his family and the retiring old sheriff, John, and his family.”

But Symington said Drown, in trying to cut his own public image, has not asked Duffy to play a more prominent role in the campaign. Although they have discussed strategy, “Jack wants to be in charge,” she said.

Symington said the Drown campaign polled 300 voters countywide and found an even split between Duffy-haters and Duffy supporters. (They also found that Hoobler, who left the San Diego Police Deparment 15 years ago, with the highest name recognition.)

The Drown campaign also has raised the most money; $87,651 by Friday, more than twice his nearest competitor. He is the only candidate who can afford any significant media advertising. And has been the front-runner in shagging the larger endorsements, including the coveted Deputy Sheriffs Assn.

Although Drown’s competitors, most notably Roache, have complained that the DSA endorsement was strong-armed by Duffy, the DSA denies that charge. In defending the endorsement, Skip Murphy, who recently stepped down as DSA president, said: “Jack Drown is not a John Duffy clone.”

Nevertheless, the DSA support has had its drawbacks. Drown was cast in a bad light earlier this year for side-stepping department rules in accepting deputy money. In addition, the other candidates contend that many pro-Drown deputies are working on county time for the man they think will be the next boss.

A case in point: A flyer went up on a bulletin board at the sheriff’s station in Imperial Beach, advertising a “Rally for Jack Drown . . . Show your support for the next Sheriff just before the Primary Election!” The flyers also carried the station phone numbers for two lieutenants and two sergeants.

At the rally, which was billed as a family picnic, Drown and a campaign aide addressed the crowd. At least one picnicker went away disgusted. “It was billed as a family picnic for deputy sheriffs, but turned out to be a promo and fund-raiser for Jack Drown,” he said.

Lt. Lori Bird, whose name and office phone were listed on the flyer, insisted the event was nonpolitical. “It wasn’t a political function per se,” she said.

But Drown, told of the flyers, conceded: “Those were mistakes. That shouldn’t have happened.”

Drown, like Duffy, favors the grand jury system over creating a new civilian review board to monitor deputy misconduct. He also, like Duffy, is opposed to a new civilian Department of Corrections to run the jail.

He believes jail overcrowding can be eased if the county continues to follow the jail master plan, which includes opening of the Otay Mesa jail.

Unlike Duffy, he believes he would have a “good relationship” with the county Board of Supervisors. And he thinks allegations of deputy abuse can be corrected, and deputy morale lifted, with more clearly defined policies within the department.

“I want people treated fairly,” he said. “I want people treated with respect.”

JIM ROACHE--Like Drown, Roache came up through the ranks. But unlike Drown, he had to sue Duffy to get the sheriff to rescind a policy against staff members running against the incumbent sheriff.

The legal skirmish won him a fair amount of publicity and, he hopes, the conviction of voters that just because he hails from the Sheriff’s Department, he is not a Duffy man.

Roache, 44, currently supervises the sheriff’s Lemon Grove station. He also is a member of the San Diego city school’s board, an elective post that he said shows he is a proven vote-getter.

His wife and campaign aide, Jeanette Roache, said they expect a low voter turnout. “Primaries are typically low turnouts and I think that’s good for Jim, because he’s run before,” she said.

His detractors, primarily Drown and Jimno, point out that Roache, as only a captain, is ill-prepared to run a major law enforcement agency. Furthermore, Drown supporters have quietly mentioned an incident 17 years ago when Roache was part of a group of deputies involved in a jailhouse fight with an inmate, who later died.

But Roache said he and the other deputies were exonerated. “I was relieved of duty, interviewed by homicide investigators, sent home and the next day came back to work,” he said.

On the issues, Roache favors a civilian review board, one that would hold public hearings but have no subpoena power. He believes a civilian Department of Corrections is “unnecessary.”

He said jail overcrowding can be reduced with the use of alternative incarceration methods, such as electronic home detention. He thinks more supervision is needed to bring down deputy misconduct and abuse, and that he can be “candid and forthright” in dealing with the Board of Supervisors.

VINCE JIMNO--As police chief in Escondido, Jimno is banking hard on his familiarity in the North County, where before moving to Escondido he served as police chief in Carlsbad. Next to Drown he has raised the most money, $38,363.

“It all depends on the backlash against Duffy,” he said about his prospects for advancing to the general election. “And how that sticks on Drown.”

At 47, with 13 years of service as a police chief, Jimno has campaigned for more professional law enforcement, more regional approaches to crime problems, and more accountability to the various cities that contract for sheriff’s services.

He initially announced his opposition to a civilian review board. But on Friday, after a week of public criticism over two deputies killing an innocent man in Vista, Jimno changed his position and called for a public review commission because “the rebuilding of public trust is of paramount importance.”

He opposes a Department of Corrections, but advocates phasing out jail deputies and recruiting replacement civilian jail guards.

He believes the sheriff should “lead the charge to lease or borrow land” for new jail space to relieve overcrowding. He said deputies abusing inmates can be curtailed if the Sheriff’s Department would stop transferring problem deputies and malcontents to jail duty. “It’s like putting them in penalty boxes,” he said.

In dealing with the Board of Supervisors, he said he would flex his muscles when appropriate; but “it shouldn’t always be pure combat” as it often has been with Duffy.

Jimno also is not without his skeletons.

He recently was criticized when a Carlsbad policewoman sued the police department and blamed Jimno for not properly responding to her complaints of sexual harassment, a contention Jimno denies. He also has been chastised for moving around too much, having also worked for small police departments in Northern California.

But Jimno shrugs off the criticism.

“Somebody has to go in and clean it out,” he said of the Sheriff’s Department. “And I’ve got the talent to do that.”

RAY HOOBLER--He was appointed San Diego police chief in 1971, after about 20 years on the force. But he resigned in 1975, when he came under fire for lying about reviewing confidential files of police counselors.

Hoobler admits the mistake. But he said his greatest sin was in signing a document claiming his top staff never read the files, when in fact they had. “I am probably the only chief executive officer who ever signed a document without reading it in its entirety,” he said.

Since leaving the department, Hoobler, now 62, has worked as security chief for a chain of hotels and in the travel business. He also has chaired the San Diego Crime Commission.

Despite his long absence from daily police work, Hoobler is confident he will be a finalist in the primary election. “I feel very strongly about that,” he said. “The voters are looking for somebody outside the department who can be totally objective and effectively represent the department.”

Rather than a review board, he favors an “advisory board of community leaders” who would assist him in molding policy. He is the only candidate to support a Department of Corrections, pointing out that “very few sheriff’s deputies sign on to become turnkeys.”

To ease jail overcrowding, he said the county should be more innovative and consider leasing or buying structures for new jails. He said deputy abuse is a stigma that emanates from the top, and that the new sheriff should send a message to the troops that the department “has to maintain public confidence, which doesn’t exist now.”

If elected, he would hire a full-time aide to work with the Board of Supervisors. Without a healthy relationship, he said, the sheriff cannot expect the board to be generous to the Sheriff’s Department at budget time.

JIM MESSENGER--He is the least known, and least likely to succeed in the primary.

Currently assigned as a senior police officer in Carlsbad, Messenger, 41, has worked in law enforcement since 1973.

He originally was a sheriff’s deputy, but crossed Duffy in the late 1970s when, during a DSA contract dispute, he wrote a newspaper letter saying Duffy had “mismanaged the organization.” His fortunes fell further when he omitted crucial information from a report about a jailhouse fight with an inmate in 1985, and he was fired.

Although he denies his campaign is a vendetta against Duffy, Messenger said he believes he could beat the incumbent sheriff if the two of them were matched in the primary. “I think I could have brought John to his knees,” he said.

Messenger supports an “advisory” review board, but one without subpoena power. He opposes a Department of Corrections, and believes the answer to jail overcrowding is building a number of smaller jails for minimum security inmates.

He said jailhouse abuse has occurred because staffing levels are too low, and as a beat cop himself, he strongly advocates hiring more uniform officers to work the streets. “I think there’s a point of crisis in the county and I deal with it daily,” he said of work as a patrolman. “I’m the only one out there working with the people.”