Luna faces off against LA ex-Sheriff Villanueva in crowded primary rematch

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna unseated his predecessor Alex Villanueva in a hard-fought campaign four years ago. Next week, Villanueva hopes to return the favor.

Villanueva is one of seven candidates challenging Luna's hopes for a second term in Tuesday's primary. Also making a return appearance is Eric Strong, a retired sheriff's lieutenant who came in third in the 2022 primary.

If no candidate gets a majority in the primary, the top two vote-getters will square off Nov. 3.

The electoral confrontation between Luna and Villanueva, the top money draws in this year's packed primary, has echoes of their showdown in November 2022. Luna garnered more than 61% of the countywide vote to defeat Villanueva, who drew less than 39% of votes.

There has been no publicly released polling on this year's sheriff's race. But a quality of life survey conducted between March 15 and 29 asked 1,400 people across L.A. County about the sheriff.

Luna's favorability in that annual index, produced by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs in partnership with the California Community Foundation, was 48%, up from 37% in 2023. His unfavorability, meanwhile, has stayed steady between 21% and 26% throughout his relatively scandal-free tenure as sheriff.

Luna's biggest base of support, the study found, was among Latinos, 55% of whom reported a favorable view of him, versus just 39% of whites.

Luna worked for the Long Beach Police Department for 36 years, including a seven-year stint as its first Latino chief, before winning election to helm the nation's largest sheriff's department in 2022.

In an interview, Luna said his track record demonstrates why he's the best choice for sheriff. Since Luna took office, he noted, violent crime has fallen every year and he has brought homicides down by 25%.

"No one running even comes close to me in my experience for leadership, management running two large departments," he said. "And then my accomplishments — no one can even hold a candle to those."

As Luna aims to show that he has been an effective leader, Villanueva tells a far different story. In an interview, Villanueva painted a picture of a Sheriff's Department in severe decline.

Villanueva said the department has thousands of vacancies that Luna is struggling to fill because of his "toxic leadership" as sheriff.

"The Sheriff's Department is in a tailspin," the former sheriff said. "It's collapsing right before our eyes and the establishment wants to pretend everything is OK, but it's in total chaos and dysfunction."

Luna defended his recruitment and retention record and said the department is operating far more smoothly today than it ever did under Villanueva.

His campaign provided Sheriff's Department statistics that showed the department — which employs nearly 18,000 people — made 1,017 sworn hires under Luna from 2023 to 2025, 201 fewer than it made under Villanueva from 2020 to 2022.

But that gap was counterbalanced, according to the data, by the fact that the department lost 204 more sworn employees to attrition under Villanueva than it did under Luna over the same periods.

Although "every large agency in the United States is struggling with retention," Luna said, Villanueva is "saying all these people didn't want to come or wanted to leave. That is not factual and the numbers prove that."

Villanueva also called Luna "a puppet" of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. "He's just part of the far-left agenda of the board," the former sheriff added. "He's not a law-and-order sheriff who's going to enhance public safety."

Luna said he has a "very good relationship with the board." That relationship, he said, has allowed for better cooperation with the county than under Villanueva — who lost a bid for Supervisor Janice Hahn's seat in 2024 and whose interactions with the supervisors were often combative — when he was sheriff.

All five supervisors have endorsed Luna's candidacy, along with the L.A. County Chief Police Chiefs Assn., the L.A. County Federation of Labor, and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif.

This month, Luna picked up the endorsement of one of two unions for members of the Sheriff's Department, the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, or ALADS, which lauded Luna's "professionalism, integrity and commitment." In 2022, the union endorsed Villanueva.

"They appreciate the fact that I'm taking the department in a different way, the accountability, the responsibility," Luna said of ALADs. "They're not getting their asses handed to them every day in the media, like they were under Alex."

This cycle, Villanueva's list of public endorsements is not as deep as it was four years ago. But it includes the L.A. County Republican Party, the Los Angeles School Police Assn. and more than a dozen members of the state Assembly, mayors and members of multiple city councils.

Capt. Mike Bornman, who has decades of experience at the Sheriff's Department he is now vying to run, said "this campaign has always been about restoring confidence in the Sheriff's Department and putting public safety first. I continue to believe that voters are looking for experienced, steady leadership that is focused on results, accountability, and safer communities."

Luna's campaign spent about $515,000 from April 19 to May 16, far outstripping those of his challengers, records show. Luna's campaign reported in its May 16 campaign finance filing that it raised more than $103,000 over the period and that he still had more than $326,000 available to spend in the campaign's home stretch.

At less than $91,000, Villanueva's campaign raised the second-most money this year, about $18,000 of which came in from April 19 to May 16, when there was about $103,000 left in the former sheriff's war chest.

The campaign for Eric White, a Compton-raised detective with about 12 years' experience at the department, reported raising about $19,000 in that same period, the second-most of all the candidates, according to its filing. That left his campaign with about $7,500 after spending almost $22,000 during the period.

The other challengers struggled to raise money during that period.

Strong brought in about $2,300 and spent less than $16,000, leaving him with around $19,000. Brendan Corbett, who was assistant sheriff for custody operations under Villanueva, brought in $1,000 and spent about $1,300 in that same period, when his campaign reported that it had about $32,000 on hand.

Bornman's campaign brought in about $1,900 and spent $2,900 in the period, leaving him with more than $13,000 to spend.

U.S. Marine Corps veteran Oscar Martinez, who has worked in the Sheriff's Department after fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, reported having less than $5,500 left on May 16. His campaign spent about $500 and brought in less than $50 from April 19 to then.

Sgt. Karla Carranza, who has worked for the department for more than two decades and also ran for sheriff in 2022, reported having about $600 on hand on April 19. Her campaign did not appear to have filed a report for the May 16 filing period, according to L.A. County campaign finance records.