Better know a CA gubernatorial candidate: Chad Bianco

In the third installment of our ongoing look at candidates to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom when he terms out next year, we look at Republican candidate and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. 

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is the MAGA candidate of the gubernatorial contest. The mustached Republican is a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, who once said, “I think it’s time we put a felon in the White House,” after the once and future president was convicted of 34 felonies related to his payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Bianco was born in the late 1960s at an Air Force base in Ogden, Utah and grew up in a small mining town in the Beehive State as the oldest of three boys. He moved to California in 1989.

Four years later, he attended the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Academy and graduated at the top of his class. Not long afterwards, he was hired by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

He was an employee of the department for the next 20-plus years until 2018 when ran for and won the race for sheriff. In that role, which is technically the county’s elected sheriff, coroner and public administrator, he oversees the county’s five jails, six court buildings, a civil bureau, the Coroner’s Bureau, Public Administrator’s Office, 12 patrol stations, 17 contract cities, 4,200 dedicated employees and an operating budget of more than $1 billion.

Bianco sought and won re-election in 2022.

What’s going for him: Bianco appears natural on camera and on the stump and his bit about the California dream dying, about people leaving the state because its too expensive, is sure to resonate with at least some voters.

What’s going against him: Bianco is not a traditional Republican in a Democrat-controlled state, which would put him at a serious disadvantage from the get-go anyway, but a staunchly MAGA Republican. It should be a given at this point that Trump isn’t exactly popular in California, with approval ratings hovering at 30 percent. That is, however, significantly higher than Bianco’s own poll numbers, which according to an Emerson College survey from April are at just 4 percent. It’s worth noting that the same poll showed him in front of all other declared candidates except for former Rep. Katie Porter (8 percent) and the as-yet undeclared Kamala Harris (31 percent), with 54 percent still undecided.