‘There isn’t a good reason to do this. There isn’t even a bad reason to do this.’
by JOE ESKENAZI August 4, 2025 (MissionLocal.org)
If Chad Bianco was any more of a right-wing zealot, Gov. Gavin Newsom would tap him to be a recurring guest on his dopey podcast.
If you’re in favor of arresting transgender people in locker rooms for indecent exposure when they “strut around naked,” he’s your guy. If you want to abolish any state sanctuary protections for immigrants, look no further. If your idea of criminal justice is “cuff ‘em and stuff ‘em,” he’s your huckleberry.
Bianco is the sheriff of Riverside County and a Republican candidate for governor. He is also, notably, San Francisco sheriff Paul Miyamoto’s choice for governor.
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And this is baffling. San Francisco political leaders are baffled. San Francisco political thinkers are baffled. Miyamoto’s current and erstwhile colleagues are also baffled, though they do point out that Bianco and Miyamoto do seem to share a similar taste in hats.
What’s baffling to San Franciscans aren’t Bianco’s beliefs: People are entitled to hold conservative views and these do resonate across broad swaths of the nation and much of California — a vast state with more Republicans in it than almost any other.
A bewhiskered, Covid-denying sheriff seeking higher office isn’t baffling, either — that is, essentially, the plot of “Eddington.”
What’s baffling is that a San Francisco elected official would publicly promote a politician whose views are antithetical to those of a vast majority of his constituents. And, more to the point, antithetical to his own stated positions.
Bianco can now sanewash himself by claiming — accurately — that even the sheriff of the dirty hippies and liberal fruitcakes in San Francisco is backing him.
But what does Miyamoto get out of this? Nothing. Less than nothing. He’s now inviting scrutiny of an office that, other than inmates, their families, and people ranked by having to take off their belts when entering a public building, few give much thought to.
He is now being made to explain a thought process, or lack thereof, that is, indeed, baffling.
When your humble narrator last week noticed Miyamoto’s name on a list of Bianco endorsers, my first thought was that there must have been some manner of mistake.
You will note that Alpine County sheriff Tom Minder is listed twice here; the utmost care may not have been applied in producing this material. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding at some back-slapping meeting among the state’s 58 sheriffs. It turns out there was not.
“I support Sheriff Chad Bianco, alongside other sheriffs in California, as a peer leader in law enforcement and in the work we do to keep our communities safe,” Miyamoto wrote last week in a statement to Mission Local. “Law enforcement is not defined by political parties, but grounded in a commitment to public safety and the integrity of the profession.”
Law-enforcement may not be defined by political parties, though only members of one political party are talking about kicking down the doors of high school locker rooms and arresting transgender children.
But, regardless, the office of governor of California is defined by political parties. That, and nothing else, is the issue here. As such, Miyamoto’s statement makes no sense.
The sheriff did not return multiple calls and messages asking for clarification. But he did talk to KQED, the Chronicle and, we’re told, Channel 2. These interviews did not offer much in the way of illumination; amid Dead shows and on the cusp of Outside Lands, you could call this Sheriff Miyamoto’s Incoherent Summer Tour.
He told the Chron that he supported Bianco because the two are friendly; He told KQED “We’re both sheriffs.” He emphasized that he does not share any of the MAGA beliefs of the man he endorsed to be our governor.
Nobody should begrudge Miyamoto and Bianco’s friendship; of note, right-wing loons are slagging the Riverside County sheriff for associating with a registered Democrat.
But there is a rather large delta between “Chad Bianco is a lot of fun to be around, does the same job as me and has great taste in hats” and “I want Chad Bianco to tell us all what to do.”
The First Amendment provides Miyamoto and all the rest of us the right to free speech. But it does not protect us from the consequences of our free speech.
The consequences here could be deleterious. And not just for Miyamoto.
What’s the political upside for Miyamoto to endorse a MAGA Republican who’ll be hard-pressed to escape the gubernatorial primary? There isn’t one.
“There isn’t a good reason to do this,” said veteran political consultant Jim Ross. “There isn’t even a bad reason to do this.”
Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, Jr., summed up the off-the-wall endorsement as, “They are both sheriffs. There’s no other reason, and you don’t need any other reason. He may not even be thinking politically.”
He may not be thinking at all. Da Mayor, however, said voters shouldn’t hold this against Miyamoto. Instead, they should just judge him on how well he’s serving as San Francisco sheriff.
That’s an intriguing proposition, however. Brown himself admits that, prior to his political life, all he knew about sheriffs was what he saw in cowboy movies.
What a sheriff and his deputies do in a dense, urban environment like San Francisco is not something many people give much thought to. The answer, in a nutshell: Staff the jails and guard public buildings, neither of which requires you to wear a big hat.
Miyamoto is now inviting further public examination of his office. Of late, the two most notable stories coming out of the Sheriff’s Department have been Miyamoto’s chief of staff wrecking a staff car in a hit-and-run and filing a false police report — in an investigation that, inexplicably, was handled by Miyamoto’s office and not the cops — and strange and terrible conditions in San Francisco’s rapidly filling and understaffed jails.
Like the assessor or treasurer, what the sheriff does is not something most voters know about, think about or know to think about. We vote for the officials who espouse the positions we like and pose next to the people we like. Miyamoto has compromised his ability to do this.
Voters compelled to scrutinize his department may not be wholly enamored of what they find.
So that’s suboptimal news for Miyamoto. But his decision to elevate a MAGA Republican could resonate further.
San Francisco remains a sanctuary city. While this is now a favorite right-wing piñata, one needn’t be a bleeding-heart liberal to understand the benefit of sanctuary policies.
When Daryl Gates died, the headline for his obituary was “Daryl Gates, the Ruthless L.A. Police Chief Who Ran an International Spying Operation on the Side.” He also instituted sanctuary policies in Los Angeles to ensure undocumented people felt safe reporting crimes to the police.
Politically and practically, San Francisco officials in 2025 should at least be able to espouse the positions Daryl Gates held in the 1970s. But Miyamoto’s endorsement of an anti-immigration extremist works against even this.
“Our sanctuary policies rest on the fact that we’re all safer when people feel safe cooperating with law enforcement,” says longtime San Francisco political strategist Eric Jaye.
“When one of the city’s leading law-enforcement officers is embracing a Trump-like candidate who is encouraging cooperation with ICE, that undermines the foundational trust we’re trying to build through being a sanctuary city,” Jaye said.
This, Jaye continues, is more than a political mistake — though it is that. It’s also “a sheriff undermining a foundational safety policy in San Francisco.”
As Bianco persists in his quest for Sacramento, a broader swath of voters will get to know him beyond just a tough-on-crime Fox News mainstay with a big hat and a bigger mustache.
He is facing more than a dozen lawsuits filed by the survivors of inmates who died in Riverside County jails.
There is no shortage of plaintiffs: “The raw data and the per capita data make clear that the Riverside County Jails are a death sentence for any pretrial detainee,” reads a lawsuit from the survivors of Richard “Bump” Matus, Jr., one of 18 inmates to die in custody in Riverside County jails in 2022 alone.
This spate of in-custody deaths led to an ongoing investigation from the state Department of Justice.
In July 2025, former longtime Riverside Sheriff’s Deputy Victoria Flores sued Bianco and the county, alleging Bianco fired her after she complained of guards beating inmates and eluding discipline. Flores also alleges that Bianco’s department used administrative tricks to elude responsibility for tallying even more inmate deaths.
It remains to be seen if voters like Bianco more or less as they learn more about him. It remains to be seen if the same goes for his endorser, Miyamoto.
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JOE ESKENAZI
Managing Editor/Columnist. Joe was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended U.C. Berkeley. He never left.
“Your humble narrator” was a writer and columnist for SF Weekly from 2007 to 2015, and a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine from 2015 to 2017. You may also have read his work in the Guardian (U.S. and U.K.); San Francisco Public Press; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Examiner; Dallas Morning News; and elsewhere.
He resides in the Excelsior with his wife and three (!) kids, 4.3 miles from his birthplace and 5,474 from hers.
The Northern California branch of the Society of Professional Journalists named Eskenazi the 2019 Journalist of the Year.More by Joe Eskenazi
