Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is consistently polling as one of the top three candidates in the race for governor. The Republican candidate sees a lot of problems with California and wants to take the state in a different direction.
As we close in on the California Primary, CapRadio is working to interview all of the candidates for governor.
Our goal is for you to get an authentic sense of how each candidate views California’s most pressing issues, and what they would do if elected. He joined Insight to share his views on a host of issues, from affordability to immigration.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
How does a career in law enforcement prepare or qualify you to become governor of California?
I think it uniquely prepares me, especially for what we're suffering from in California. We're suffering from unbelievable crime. Now we're learning, unbelievable government corruption. And I believe what I've heard over the last five, even 10 years, is that Californians are looking for someone at the head of our government that they can trust, that they can believe in, that they know is telling them the truth.
And just as importantly, maybe more importantly, is leadership ability. I have 33 years of irrefutable public service, respectable leadership ability in public service. And one of the things that we do is, we are trained problem solvers. Our entire existence is handling everyone else's emergencies as quickly and as efficiently as possible and then moving on to the next emergency. It's almost on-the-job training of information gathering, problem solving and then adjusting how you're fixing that problem on the fly to make sure that you come out with the desired ending.
And that's completely different from anything in government. Government is about meetings and it's about committees and it's about hiring all these people. For regular Californians especially, we know what's broken. We know how we can fix it but the government refuses to because of the bureaucracy involved.
And my skill set in problem solving ability, uniquely qualifies me to move on to be in that role to fix our beautiful state. To fix the problems that are harming us, and just truly implement common sense back into decision making. And making it to where Californian’s lives are easier and not more restricted by our government.
Affordability is a paramount issue for Californians, a flagship talking point in this race. Realistically, what would you do in your first year to make living in California more affordable?
We are going to absolutely slash the cost of living in California. We are going to slash the cost of a new home in California because those are being harmed by government regulations. Government regulations, bureaucratic red tape, environmental activism, terrorism is what I call it, is destroying our business environment, our building environment, our oil industry. All of those things are completely controlled and being ruined by overregulation.
There are over 400,000 regulations through a regulatory environment that is just out of control. And as your governor, I can remove every single one of those. We do need regulations that would prevent us from being a third-world country. We do have to have safety regulations, some environmental regulations, but we do not need the regulations that are the rest of the country, on steroids. We should not be punished for just living in California. As your governor, I will remove all of those regulations. We will abide by federal regulations that every other state abides by and we will give businesses here in California the same opportunity that other states are giving them to succeed in their business, which automatically lowers the cost of living.
Our home building environment is purposely created by the government to be unaffordable. They love talking about affordable housing, but they are the ones that made it unaffordable by basically pricing the builders out of business. They can no longer afford to build a home for the price that we can afford. It takes between three and five years to build a home in California from start to end because of bureaucratic red tape. We can remove all of that.
I'd also like you to address something that's been reported during your time as sheriff over the last eight years, that you were once affiliated with the Oath Keepers in 2014. That is one of the largest groups in the far right militia movement tied to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. You've addressed this in the past. What is your connection to this group?
I get really defensive when this comes up, especially from reporters who are I mean we're reporting this out to everybody. And even how you ask the question, you realize that the only reason you believe that it's a far right militia group is because the left told you it was.
Have you ever read the mission statement of Oath Keepers? Because if you have, you would see that it almost word for word, mirrors the mission statement of the ACLU.
The Oath Keepers did have ties to the January 6th attack at the Capitol.
What does that matter? No, they did not. They had a person that was associated with the organization that was. And this is where we are so broken in politics, in news reporting and everything else. Because, if I told you that a doctor killed a patient on purpose, that doesn't mean that the medical industry is completely flawed and broken. That means that one person is.
We have the far left saying we can't criminal profile people and say that a certain race is responsible for all cocaine trafficking because one person was a member of that race that was arrested for cocaine trafficking. It is the most ridiculous argument I have ever, ever, ever heard and we just keep repeating it over and over and over again. The Oath Keepers organization was a group of military and law enforcement professionals that swore an oath to defend our constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, plain and simple. It's defending your constitutional rights.
And because three people who happened to get arrested at January 6th were also members of the Oath Keepers organization, the far left repeated over and over and over again that they were a far right domestic terrorist organization. It is an absolute lie. And I'm so sick of this.
I'm so sick of the division that we are creating in our country because of lies and misrepresentations and the hypocrisy of the people that are absolutely spreading it.
As a sheriff in a majority Latino area, have you heard from your community about how immigration enforcement has impacted Riverside County? What is your view on the Trump administration's immigration enforcement?
When I am the governor, the government is actually going to be run with honesty. It's not going to be run with clickbait, sensationalistic headlines. It's not going to be run with partisan politics, propaganda, and absolute lies. The environment that we have, has been absolutely created by Democrat states that have put sanctuary state policies in order.
You realize the same enforcement has always happened up until Biden refused to do anything. You have to realize that. You have to realize that people were always deported. Why are you not seeing all of the things happening in the middle of the streets and the riots and the protests and people rounded up in the middle of the street in non-sanctuary state cities and states? Because they do it exactly how they did before 2017, before sanctuary state policies were enacted.
They went into the jails and they got those people who are victimizing us, who are also in the country illegally and they deported them from the safety and security of our jails and you just didn't see it. And California's governor and the legislature were specifically told what was going to happen if they enacted sanctuary state policies. That the federal government who has always enforced immigration was going to be forced into our neighborhoods and our businesses to round those people up that are being released from jail. And that's exactly what happened.
And you're not seeing that in any other place except for sanctuary cities and states. As your governor, we will absolutely do away with sanctuary state. It is harming our communities. It is harming our cities. It is harming our entire state and it is making us far less safe all the way around. And the bad part is this was purposely done by a supermajority of Democrats in this state knowing, absolutely knowing, that this was going to be the outcome and they did it on purpose.
