Roache Ponders Changes in Sheriff’s Department : San Diego: As Roache savors victory, Jack Drown, his defeated rival, wonders what his next job will be.

“Sheriff-elect Roache” is how they answered the telephones Wednesday at Jim Roache campaign headquarters.

Inside the Mission Valley office, Roache, on two hours’ sleep, spent the day talking to reporters, accepting congratulations, calling members of his transition team and figuring out what he will do two months from now when he becomes the first new San Diego County sheriff in 20 years.

Several miles away, Assistant Sheriff Jack Drown, on 4 1/2 hours’ sleep, returned to the downtown Sheriff’s Department office he had abandoned three months ago to campaign full-time. He talked to reporters, accepted condolences, chatted with colleagues and contemplated his next job.

On Tuesday night, Roache collected 55% of the vote, soundly beating Drown by nearly 60,000 votes, despite Drown’s numerous law enforcement endorsements.

On Wednesday morning, they met by chance when they checked out of the Kingston Hotel. They shook hands, and Roache recommended that they both take a few days off, after having battled each other daily since December, when Sheriff John Duffy said he would not seek reelection.

“It would be hard not to feel a kinship with Jack Drown after all the trials and tribulations we’ve gone through over the past year,” Roache said. “He must be personally devastated.”

Drown said that, although he’s deeply disappointed in the results, he’s glad to be through with politicking.

“I think I would have been a very good sheriff,” he said. “I don’t believe I was a very good campaigner.”

Try as he might, Drown said he could not shake Duffy, whose problems in office over the years overshadowed both candidates.

During the past month, Duffy was in the news almost as much as the candidates, with daily disclosures that he had reneged on a promise to demote or fire deputies allegedly involved in jail brutality, reopened an investigation into jail brutality aimed at a sheriff’s captain who had challenged him during a civil service hearing, and spent money from a secret bank account of funds seized in drug busts.

Many agree that Duffy did Drown in.

“This race started with a flurry of John Duffy activity and ended with a flurry of John Duffy activity,” Drown said. “I carried the John Duffy legacy with me and, although I tried to run the campaign on my own merits, I was not able to show voters I was different.”

Drown said he believes it might have been different had Duffy followed his normal course of business and traveled extensively outside the county, a practice for which he was criticized.

“I kept thinking that he was usually out of town one-third of the year,” Drown said. “Why couldn’t he have been out of town for this final third of the year? Why did he have to be here now?”

Duffy is not out of office yet, and one law enforcement source speculated that Duffy will not make a transition for his successor easy, perhaps keeping Roache out of his office until Jan. 7, the date Roache is sworn in.

Getting the keys early to Duffy’s office, however, is far from Roache’s only problem.

Most members of the Deputy Sheriff’s Assn., the labor organization that represents most sheriff’s deputies, actively supported Drown in a campaign that became increasingly bitter by election eve.

Jim Roache said Wednesday that he is leaving the bad feelings of the campaign behind and already has agreed to meet next week with top members of the Deputy Sheriff’s Assn.

“I had the obligation to make the first overture,” he said. “The responsibility is not for them to come to me. I had to go to them. I have to heal some wounds and relieve the fears of the men and women of this department. I have to demonstrate that I’m sincere and not vindictive and to not allow campaign rhetoric to get in the way.”

Two members of the sheriff’s association said they were willing to work with Roache.

“The only thing we’ve ever asked any sheriff for is an open line of communication,” said Mike Cea, vice president of the sheriff’s association. “We have no regrets about our endorsement, but we’ll work with whatever sheriff we have. We’re professionals. I know of no deputy actively seeking work elsewhere because of this election.”

Tom Drake, co-chairman of the organization’s political action committee, said his colleagues kidded him today about the election results.

When he came to work Wednesday, Drake said someone had given him bandages which which to bind his wrists in case he had tried suicide. Other deputies joked that Drake soon would be working a foot patrol or toiling in one of the county jails. “Some people fear retaliation, but I don’t share that fear,” he said. “We had a difference of opinion, and if that were to be held against me, then I’m living in a different country than I thought I was.”

Besides making overtures to the sheriff’s association, Roache spent Wednesday gathering a transition team that will help him make decisions before he takes office.

Among those named to the transition team are attorney Everett Bobbitt; Bobbitt’s wife, Maudie, who is a sheriff’s captain, and former San Diego Police Chief Ray Hoobler. Roache said the others will probably be private business leaders.

Maudie Bobbitt was disciplined last year for supervising the El Cajon jail at the time that the so-called “Rambo Squad” allegedly abused inmates. Bobbitt was given a 35-day suspension without pay. The county’s Civil Service Commission revoked the suspension last month, but Duffy called the ruling improper and said he would reinstate the punishment later, after he reopened an investigation of Bobbitt.

Roache said he was seriously considering Bobbitt for one of three assistant sheriff positions, one of which is held by Drown. Roache stated during the campaign that he would replace all three assistants and the undersheriff, four jobs that are not protected under Civil Service regulations.

On Wednesday, he hedged on those statements, saying he didn’t know exactly what he would do “because I was only elected 12 hours ago.”

Besides Drown, Undersheriff Sandberg and Assistant Sheriffs Richard Reed and Charles Wigginton are all likely to be replaced. Drown said that Sandberg and Wigginton are close to retirement and probably would have left the department anyway.

“Richard and I have the most to lose. He’s got 22 years with the department, and I’ve got 21 years,” Drown said. “Now I have to figure out: Do I look outside the county for a law enforcement job? Do I stay here and look at county government? Do I look at a career change and go into the private sector? At this point, I’d consider anything.”