Orange County’s Sheriff’s Union has finally picked its chosen candidates for county supervisor in the final days before the March 5 primary election, dropping over $250,000 in spending last Thursday.
The union is spending on Supervisor Don Wagner and State Senator Janet Nguyen, both of whom are Republicans running for the only two county supervisor seats that are open this year.
Typically, the sheriff’s union are some of the biggest spenders in county elections every year, and they entered 2024 with nearly $1 million in their campaign account.
Sheriff’s deputies have one of the highest paying union contracts in the county, which supervisors just increased in December to bring over $150 million in raises to the department’s 2,100 employees over the next three years.
In addition to their union contract, the sheriff’s department gets more money than any other single county department, with $1.1 billion in the fiscal budget for this year, roughly 10% of the county’s entire budget.
Until now, they avoided publicly endorsing or backing any of the candidates running for supervisor in the county’s first and third supervisor districts.
[Read: Who’s Funding the Campaigns in the Orange County Supervisors Races?]
In the third district, which covers cities such as Irvine, Mission Viejo and Yorba Linda and extends to the county’s eastern edge, the sheriff’s union is spending big on ads supporting incumbent Supervisor Wagner.
[Read: Eastern OC Supervisors Election Could Get Decided in March Primary]
The union spent $202,000 on TV ads supporting Wagner’s campaign and another $20,000 on digital ads according to their latest disclosure on Feb. 15.
Wagner approved the sheriff’s raise at the board’s Dec. 20 meeting along with three of the other supervisors.
The lone vote against the approval was Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento, who pointed out the sheriffs were the “top of the range,” on the pay scale compared to surrounding counties and questioned why the money couldn’t go to other departments.
Wagner is running against Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan to keep the seat, and could win the election outright on March 5 if he wins more than half the vote, which would stop any run-off election in the fall.
In the first district, which covers the northwest corner of Orange County, the sheriff’s union spent over $35,000 on ads supporting State Senator Janet Nguyen’s campaign for supervisor.
[Read: Open Northwest Orange County Supervisor Seat Sees Packed Primary]
Even before the sheriff’s spending, Nguyen was outraising the pack of candidates running to replace Supervisor Andrew Do, who’s leaving at the end of the year due to term limits.
Her top opponent, Do’s chief of staff and former Assemblyman Van Tran, is over $122,000 behind her in the total of spent and fundraised cash.
Nguyen and Wagner have both added the sheriff’s union endorsement to their campaign websites, but made no mention of their backing on social media.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter or corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.