In November 2018, then-Deputy Sheriff Don Barnes won a hotly-contested race for Orange County Sheriff-Coroner, defeating Duke Nguyen, an investigator for the LA County District Attorney, 54.2% to 45.8%. The two candidates and outside committees spent more than $1.5 million on the race.
Four years later, Barnes is cruising to re-election unopposed.
“Being unopposed in the 2022 election indicates the Orange County public’s confidence in the work that has been done over the last three and a half years,” said Barnes, when reached for comment.
“A proactive approach to crime, innovations in our custody operations to reduce recidivism, and the reasonable way we responded to the COVID-19 pandemic are among the initiatives I believe have resulted in this high level of support,” said the sheriff.
“I do not take this support for granted and recognize it is a trust that must be earned on an ongoing basis,” said Barnes. I will continue to implement initiatives that are reflective of the commonsense values of our community and exercise my duties with the integrity expected by the people of Orange County.”
Barnes isn’t the only Orange County incumbent running opposed: neither Treasurer-Tax Collector Shari Freidenrich nor state Assemblyman Phillip Chen drew an opponent.
Andrew Hamilton, while not an incumbent, will also be running unopposed for the position of Orange County Auditor-Controller.
Crime is a top-of-mind issue for voters, and Orange Countians have traditionally supported a tough-on-crime approach to public safety. While he not a fiery figure, Barnes adopted strong principled stands against enforcing unpopular COVID mandates being handed down by Sacramento, preferring to focus department resources on fighting serious crime.
GOP strategist Jon Fleischman believes there are two main reasons why Sheriff Barnes has no opponent.
“The first is that he is very popular and served his first term pretty much scandal-free,” said Fleischman.
“But this is also a very large county and trying to challenge a popular incumbent would probably cost millions of dollars,” continued Fleischman. “It’s hard to put that kind of support together here.”
Even if he had drawn an opponent, Barnes was strongly positioned to win re-election. He had nearly $400,000 cash-on-hand in his campaign account at the end of 2021, and “Orange County Sheriff-Coroner” is an invaluable ballot title. Furthermore, no Orange County Sheriff in living memory has ever been defeated for re-election: even Mike Carona was narrowly elected to a third term in 2006, despite being plagued by scandal and breaking a promise not to run for a third term.
OC Independent spoke to a Democratic insider who was not surprised no Democrat emerged to challenge the Republican sheriff, and cited anti-law enforcement attitudes among progressive party activists as one reason.
“Disappointing that despite all of the issues these last few years within the Sheriff’s Department and the non-stop negative press, the Democrats were unable to find a candidate to run against Sheriff Barnes this year to give the voters a choice,” said the insider. “In reality, however, the Democrats never really run candidates for Sheriff. I can’t think of the last time they put up a truly serious candidate.”
“Unfortunately, most of today’s Democratic Party activists see law enforcement as the bad guys, folks picking on the poor and downtrodden,” the long-time insider continued. “And a number of them are still repeating their crazy ‘Defund the Police’ mantra. It hurts.”
