Sheriff Should Holster the Silencer

The sheriff isn’t talking to the newspaper. Not so much as a “Now, wait a darn minute” or “Why, if I were 20 years younger ... !”

Nothing. He’s zipped up tighter than a sleeping bag in the High Sierra.

He’s unhappy with our coverage of him in recent months and is taking it out on us by giving us the silent treatment. From what I can tell by looking around the office, we’re pretty glum about it.

You talk about hitting us where we live. Imagine working for a newspaper, and people won’t talk to you. To tell you the truth, it kind of hurts our feelings.

Keep in mind, this is a sheriff who has talked to Larry King on CNN. He talks to fundraisers whenever they want. And now he’s pulling a Marcel Marceau on us.

There’s no point in my trying to argue for or against him. Mike Carona is certainly not the first sheriff to put a sock in it. He’s not even the first Orange County bigwig to quit talking to us. Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas did the same thing some time back, before he forgave us for whatever it was we were doing to him, and now he’s a talking fool.

It’s not uncommon for politicians to be unhappy with individual reporters, but Carona’s team has decided he shouldn’t talk to anyone from The Times.

Oddly enough -- and you talk about your coincidences -- a fellow named Michael Schroeder was advising Rackauckas during his mum phase and he’s advising Carona nowadays. Schroeder is a dyed-in-the-wool politico, most notably a former chairman of the state Republican Party. Another Carona spokesman is Jon Fleischman, another Republican Party insider. He’s a political blogger and former executive director of the California Republican Party, which made him responsible for day-to-day operations.

Technically, Fleischman is a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, but his interests run much more to political intrigue than to high-speed chases on county roads. Schroeder-Fleischman is a political team, but for my money, that goes down much smoother when working for a congressman than a sheriff.

What I’m getting at is that Carona apparently has been bound and gagged by his advisors. The sheriff is trapped in a bad-news cycle, facing sexual harassment allegations, questions about how he’s handled his expense account, and with former and current associates in varying degrees of hot water.

It’s all fair game. Carona built his reputation on being a straight shooter who could charm a statue. And no one gave him better press in his early days than this newspaper. Speaking for myself, I practically slobbered over the guy.

Now, the man won’t talk to us. He’ll talk to other media, apparently suggesting that we have turned on him and he’s merely returning the favor. How this will work in a year when he’s running for a third term remains to be seen. His election opponents -- he has three -- will talk plenty. In a political campaign, silence is a vacuum quickly filled.

Because sheriffs run for office, the job is inherently political. You wish it would be only about cops and robbers, but it can sometimes degenerate into questions about campaign contributions and in-house scandals.

When you’re the sheriff, you talk. You answer the questions.

Carona has another department spokesman named Jim Amormino, who is about as nuts-and-bolts as you can get. He’s more a crime scene guy and less the cocktail party guy. If he’s got a political bone in his body, he’s never exposed it on the job.

As a once-rising star, Carona probably has had his head turned in his seven years on the job. He’s been courted by power brokers at home and in Washington.

My sense is that Schroeder-Fleischman think they’re teaching him how to play political hardball. They love that stuff, and I don’t blame them. Politics is like boxing -- rough and tumble but also a sweet science.

But when we elected Mike Carona, all we wanted was a sheriff.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.