It Can’t Just Be Gone With the Whim
Mike Carona knows something. You don’t just summarily dismiss your right-hand man because you woke up on the wrong side of the bed one morning. Do you?
But if Carona does know something, what is it? And to coin a phrase, how long has he known it?
Sorry to be so cryptic, but it’s early in the game and we probably don’t yet know the full story of why the popular Orange County sheriff fired Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo two days ago. But the firing, executed with surprisingly surgical precision given the men’s history, raises some intriguing questions.
The two have been joined at the hip since Jaramillo managed Carona’s longshot 1998 campaign. You fight lots of wars and forge lots of bonds doing that, and Carona rewarded him by getting special dispensation from the Board of Supervisors to land an assistant sheriff’s post for Jaramillo.
True, some controversies have dogged Jaramillo, but they’re nothing that Carona hasn’t addressed before. Nor, to my way of thinking, are they things that should have warranted Carona doing anything more than scolding Jaramillo and delivering short lectures on propriety.
So I now find myself asking why Jaramillo suddenly has become toxic enough that Carona publicly cut him off at the knees. If this doesn’t end any thoughts Jaramillo might have had about running for sheriff someday, it sure doesn’t help.
A Carona spokesman has said the firing wasn’t connected to anything “other than the sheriff reevaluating his executive team.” A professional statement but far from convincing.
I ran my mutterings past Jaramillo, who accepted them with relative good grace and affability. He doesn’t apologize for his intervention in the rape case pending against the son of another assistant sheriff. Jaramillo still insists his involvement, which is under investigation by a grand jury, amounted only to being loyal to a friend, Assistant Sheriff Donald Haidl, and won’t result in criminal charges. Besides, Jaramillo says, he and Carona withstood the “pressure” the Haidl case generated, just as they had with other matters that go with the territory.
“I’m in a quandary as to why Mike did what he did,” Jaramillo says. He goes on to say, however, that he thinks it stems mostly from complaints to Carona about “things I didn’t like” in the office. He won’t be more specific and is quick to say Carona had the authority to dismiss him.
Still ...
“I’m incredibly disappointed at an individual who has benefited from this association, this friendship, this brotherhood, this team for so many years ... that in such short order for whatever reasons, he makes such a life-altering decision that impacts so many people.”
Exactly. That’s why Carona must know something. “Think about that,” Jaramillo says. “If he knows something is coming, he would not only as a friend but as a boss say, ‘This is what’s coming down the road.’ ” But he didn’t, Jaramillo says, because “there is nothing coming.”
Even in disappointment, Jaramillo doesn’t sound vengeful. “I don’t want to badmouth the guy at all,” he says. “That’s a rotten way to go out.”
Nor does he buy my theory that Carona has torpedoed his political career. “It puts a hole in the hull of it,” Jaramillo, 43, concedes, but says that “once everything is finally revealed and there’s no wrongdoing that sticks,” his supporters will be there and he’ll assess his future.
In the meantime? “It may be as simple as politics took over and overcame the friendship,” he says. “He, as the sheriff, can do that, but as a human being I have to sit back and question why someone who characterizes himself as my brother would do it in this fashion.”
Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.