A Republican sheriff who runs one of the largest sheriff's offices in the U.S. is sitting near the top of early polling for the 2026 California governor's race, and he's not mincing words about why.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco ranked at 16% in a Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll released Wednesday, just one point behind fellow Republican Steve Hilton's 17%, a gap within the margin of error. The two top Democratic names in the field, Rep. Eric Swalwell and former Rep. Katie Porter, each pulled 13%.
A Republican leading a California gubernatorial poll. That alone tells you something about the state of the state.
According to Fox News, Bianco, who announced his campaign on February 17, 2025, aimed squarely at Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Sacramento Democrats who have presided over California's decline. In an interview with Fox News Digital, Bianco described the state's political class as having a "sick and twisted love affair with criminals" and an "absolute refusal" to enforce the law.
The sheriff connected the dots between policy and consequence with a clarity that Sacramento has spent years avoiding:
"It's no longer a cost of doing business. It's driving them out of business."
He pointed to the devastation playing out in farming communities and retail businesses alike. Equipment stolen. Produce stolen. Shops were robbed blind. And the weather, Bianco argued, only buys the state so much goodwill:
"The weather only keeps you in California for so long. You can't function here if you're not safe. Our farming community is getting robbed blind, their equipment's being stolen, their produce is being stolen … (and) our regular businesses are being robbed blind."
For five consecutive years, by Bianco's count, California has lost residents. People are voting with their moving trucks.
Newsom has repeatedly emphasized that crime in California is on the decline. His office recently touted $1.7 billion invested during his tenure "to fight crime, help local governments hire more police, and improve public safety." His 2023 allocation of $267 million went to 55 communities to combat retail crime, which his office called "part of the largest-ever state investment to fight organized retail crime."
In a January press release, Newsom struck a tough tone:
"These operations continue to send a clear message: California will not tolerate organized crime that preys on working families, small businesses, and local communities."
Bianco isn't buying it. And his counterargument exposes the accounting trick at the heart of Sacramento's crime statistics.
In 2014, California voters approved a proposition that reduced penalties for crimes like drug possession and shoplifting from felonies to misdemeanors. The downstream effect, Bianco argues, is that the state redefined crime out of existence and then celebrated the lower numbers:
"Things that were a crime 14 years ago are no longer a crime, so they don't get reported. Things that used to be crimes aren't crimes, but we're still feeling it."
This is the sleight of hand that Californians have lived with for over a decade. You don't solve a problem by reclassifying it. You just stop counting it. The governor then spends $1.7 billion fighting the crime he spent years decriminalizing, and his press office frames it as leadership.
Bianco also targeted California's sanctuary policies, which prohibit state and local law enforcement from using resources to enforce or investigate federal immigration violations and restrict cooperation with ICE except in cases involving individuals convicted of specified serious offenses. The state further restricts immigration enforcement in sensitive locations like schools and hospitals, requiring judicial warrants for access to nonpublic areas and limiting institutional cooperation with federal authorities.
The sheriff framed the issue as one of misplaced priorities:
"They know it's a disaster; they refuse to stop it. So, instead, they import illegal immigrants into the state and then give them free stuff on our backs. They take all our taxpayer money and give them free healthcare, free medical, free school, free everything, free money to live on."
Sacramento shields illegal immigrants from federal enforcement while its own citizens flee the state. The contradiction is self-evident. Resources flow to people who broke the law to arrive, while the taxpayers fund those resources to pack up for Texas and Florida.
Bianco claims endorsements from a slate of 52 law enforcement leaders and groups, including the Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC), which represents more than 86,000 public safety members across more than 960 associations, and the Deputy Sheriffs' Association of San Diego County.
"Law enforcement is completely behind me."
That kind of institutional support from the people who actually enforce California's laws carries weight. These aren't think-tank endorsements or donor-class nods. These are officers and deputies who see the consequences of Sacramento's policies every shift.
PORAC also endorsed Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa in the race, a reminder that law enforcement's frustration with the status quo crosses party lines, even if the solutions don't.
The conventional wisdom says no. California hasn't elected a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the state's voter registration numbers tilt heavily blue. But conventional wisdom also said crime was under control and nobody was leaving.
Bianco is betting that the sheer weight of lived experience has shifted the calculus. He told Fox News Digital that "even Democrats know they can't vote Democrat this time." Whether that's campaign optimism or an accurate reading of a broken electorate, the early polling suggests he's touching a nerve.
"California is in dire, desperate search of someone that they can trust that is going to be honest and transparent with them. They all realize, if you employ common sense, send the law guy that's been doing it for so long, to fix the corruption and the crime."
Newsom, rumored to be a frontrunner for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, has larger ambitions. Fox News Digital reached out to his office for comment and received no response. The governor who never stops talking about California's progress apparently had nothing to say about a sheriff leading his party's gubernatorial polls.
Bianco summed up his read on the electorate simply:
"We're leading in these polls because we are offering a better California. We are offering a commonsense California, and it's resonating with people."
Five years of population loss. A decade of decriminalized theft. A sanctuary apparatus that prioritizes illegal immigrants over the citizens footing the bill. Californians don't need a poll to tell them what's broken. They need someone willing to say it out loud.
Bianco is saying it.