Your guide to the L.A. County sheriff’s race: A rematch between Luna and Villanueva

Four years ago, the race for Los Angeles County sheriff was one of the most closely watched local elections. Challenger Robert Luna ultimately beat the combative sitting sheriff, Alex Villanueva, by more than 20 percentage points.

Now, in a bit of political deja vu, the two lawmen are facing off again for the job of leading the largest sheriff’s department in the country.

This cycle, the race has drawn a lot less attention. But it again presents voters with a decision between two experienced leaders with distinct visions for how best to improve the sheriff’s department and keep Angelenos safe.

California

Voter guide to the 2026 California general election

California’s general election takes place on Novemer 3. Learn about L.A.’s city and county races as well races for state office.

Oct. 1, 2026

Former Long Beach Police chief Robert Luna came out of retirement to run for sheriff in 2022, promising to turn around a department that had veered off course.

As someone who didn’t have the wide name recognition or countywide political experience of some of his challengers, Luna’s second-place finish to Villanueva in the primary was far from guaranteed, but he ultimately cleared the rest of the field by a wide margin.

Fast-forward four years to June, and Luna received 44.2% of the vote in this primary — less than six points short of winning the race outright — versus Villanueva’s 21.7%. And Luna’s been a more effective fundraiser, bringing in $366,000 since Jan. 1, more than three times the nearly $109,000 Villanueva had raised by June 30, according to their most recent campaign filings. Luna had $352,000 in the war chest as of June 30, and Villanueva had about $56,000.

But Villanueva has wide name recognition in L.A. County. And he pulled off a historic political upset of his own in 2018 when he beat Sheriff Jim McDonnell, who is now the Los Angeles police chief. It was the first time an incumbent L.A. County sheriff lost a reelection campaign in more than a century. It was also the first time in 100 years that a Democrat had been elected to the nonpartisan sheriff’s job.

After running on a progressive platform and pitching himself as a criminal justice reformer, Villanueva tacked hard to the right. Within two years he was a favorite of conservative media, including Fox News, where he appeared repeatedly to vilify “woke” culture and criticize Democrats. He ultimately switched his party registration to Republican in a move that solidified a new base of law-and-order supporters while alienating many who supported him in 2018.

Villanueva’s tenure was marked by controversy and scandal. He launched, then walked back a criminal leak investigation of a Los Angeles Times reporter and was ordered to testify after sheriff’s deputies took and shared pictures at the site of Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash. Villanueva defied subpoenas over so-called deputy gangs.

Now, Luna is the one defending his record as sheriff over the last four years. He’s presided over declines in homicides and violent crime and established a period of relative calm after the stormy Villanueva years. But Luna’s department has come under scrutiny in the wake of a July 2025 incident in which a grenade exploded accidentally in a department parking lot, killing three deputies. The state has fined the department more than $350,000 after identifying a series of safety violations leading up to the blast.

And the Civilian Oversight Commission filed suit against the department in June for declining to provide certain records related to three cases of use of force the commission issued subpoenas for in February 2025. Luna has said the county’s attorneys maintain that the unredacted records can’t be released until it completes a “meet and confer” process with the Sheriff’s Department union, a claim that watchdogs have disputed.

Fundraising data will be updated regularly until the election.

The Sheriff’s Department provides law enforcement services to all unincorporated areas in Los Angeles County. It also has contracts with 42 of the county’s 88 municipalities, including Malibu, West Hollywood and Santa Clarita.

Villanueva asserts that recruitment and retention have suffered under Luna. The former sheriff said he keeps up with the department he once ran, and that deputies frequently complain to him about understaffing and low morale.

“They’re being asked to do too much and there’s no support at all,” Villanueva said. “The fact is there are just no people left, there are no deputies left to respond to emergent situations.”

Villanueva added that the number of unfilled sworn positions at the department has risen since he was sheriff. County and Sheriff’s Department records confirm that while sworn vacancies more than doubled during Villanueva’s term from about 477 in December 2018 to 1,069 by Nov. 9, 2022, Luna has presided over a further increase in sworn vacancies to 1,452 three years later.

Luna disputed Villanueva’s claims that there aren’t enough deputies to maintain an effective department. “He’s factually incorrect,” the sheriff said. “He’s just pulling numbers out of thin air.”

The department has reported that the number of new deputies who graduated in academy classes rose by nearly a third between 2024 and 2025, to more than 400 last year. Data also show that retention rates have risen under Luna after falling precipitously toward the end of Villanueva’s tenure.

“We’re doing so much better, and remember, I inherited a lot of the challenges with staffing from my predecessor,” Luna said, “because of his horrible, fractured relationships.”

Luna points out that violent crime has fallen every year since he took office. Between 2023, his first full year in office, and 2025, homicides fell by more than 25%. That’s one reason why he says voters should send him back to the Hall of Justice for another four years.

“I definitely want to continue the progress that’s been made in crime reduction,” he said. “What I’m also excited about is at the same time I’ve been reducing crime, I’ve been reducing uses of force. We’ve been reducing deputy-involved shootings.”

Department statistics confirm those assertions and also show that last year, property crimes were broadly down from 2022.

Villanueva said he and many of the deputies he talks to feel that crime has run rampant since he left office. Contributing to that assessment, he claimed, is a perceived inability or unwillingness to effectively fight certain types of crime. Deputies have told him some sheriff’s stations don’t have the resources or people they need, he said.

“It’s popping up right now every day. We have the street takeovers, we have the looting that’s going down left and right,” Villanueva said, adding that as sheriff, he’d restore order and be “focused on making sure the community stays safe.”

With millions of people expected to travel to Southern California for the 2028 Summer Olympics, whoever is voted in as sheriff in November will spend many hours working with the Los Angeles Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to prepare for the Games and ensure fans and athletes are safe.

Villanueva said he’s concerned that the “combination of incompetence and ideology” that he believes Luna has brought to the Sheriff’s Department leave him ill-prepared to handle the next four years.

“We’re under the deadline of getting ready for the Olympics, and there’s no way that Luna is going to be in position to assist with the Olympics,” Villanueva said.

Luna rebutted the claim by highlighting the key role his department played in the multiagency law enforcement effort to keep people safe at the World Cup this year.

“We had a very successful World Cup,” Luna said. “That builds a foundation for all the events coming up, including the Super Bowl, the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics, as we have been continuously preparing for that.”