McDonnell takes early lead in L.A. County sheriff race

Jim McDonnell led in early voting returns Tuesday in the race to lead a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department demoralized by scandal and facing federal oversight of its jails.

The early count, which included mail-in ballots received before election day, gave McDonnell more than 75% and his opponent, retired Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, just under 25%.

McDonnell, a Los Angeles Police Department veteran and police chief of Long Beach, is aiming to become the county’s first sheriff in a century elected from outside the department.

McDonnell made an entrance at his election party at the JW Marriott around 9 p.m., flanked by his wife and his two daughters to the sound of bagpipers from the Los Angeles Police Emerald Society.

In remarks to the crowd, he called the absentee returns “very good.”

“I hope to continue bringing you good news throughout the evening,” he said.

He joked that the positive descriptions of him from his supporters would soon come to an end once he becomes sheriff.

In an interview with The Times, McDonnell said he wasn’t ready to call the race but was happy with the early returns and looking forward to starting as sheriff.

“I didn’t expect to come in with a margin as big as this, but I’m very happy that it is,” he said. “I look back on the last year and having the opportunity to go around the county and meet people from so many diverse communities and be able to ask for their support, and it looks like tonight I’ve gotten that support. So building on that, not only now that the election is pretty much over, but the work just begins.”

He said the support he’s received from the law enforcement and other communities is “a good jumping off point to be able to do what’s necessary moving forward.”

McDonnell was heavily favored in his campaign against Tanaka after almost winning the primary outright against six opponents. Tanaka, who has struggled to distance himself from the Sheriff’s Department’s problems, ran a nearly invisible campaign at times and badly trailed McDonnell in fundraising since the primary.

The election winner takes office Dec. 1 and will have the task of trying to turn around the nation’s largest Sheriff’s Department, which has been led by an interim sheriff since Lee Baca abruptly retired in January. The U.S. Department of Justice has said it is moving forward with an effort to impose court oversight of the treatment of mentally ill inmates in the county jails.

The Sheriff’s Department’s 18,000 employees patrol county streets, run the county jails and provide security for courthouses and public transit. They have traditionally been averse to leaders not brought up in the agency’s insular culture.

But in this election, with the department’s reputation tarnished by a drumbeat of bad news, the unions representing deputies and supervisors backed McDonnell and his call for “a fresh set of eyes.”

Tanaka spent 31 years with the Sheriff’s Department, rising to become second-in-command under Baca. A certified public accountant and mayor of Gardena, Tanaka spent much of the primary campaign emphasizing the need to make crime prevention and public safety a priority.

After McDonnell finished first in the June primary with more than 49% of the vote to Tanaka’s 15%, Tanaka disappeared from view for much of the summer, except for his testimony in the trials of seven sheriff’s officials accused of obstructing a federal investigation into brutality and corruption by deputies in the county jails.

On the witness stand, Tanaka admitted that he was a subject of the investigation even as he hoped to lead the Sheriff’s Department. All seven defendants were convicted.

Tanaka had taken much of the heat for issues such as deputy cliques, favoritism in promotions and assaults against jail inmates, and he was ultimately forced into early retirement by Baca. Baca himself stepped down after a hiring scandal and a string of criminal indictments against department members. That opened the door for McDonnell, who had declined to run against Baca.

After Labor Day, Tanaka resurfaced in the general election race, making occasional appearances but declining invitations to debate McDonnell, setting up an unusual campaign season in which each candidate touted his own agenda while rarely mentioning the other.

McDonnell, a Boston native and son of Irish immigrants, joined the LAPD at 21, rising to No. 2 under Chief William J. Bratton. He helped implement a federal consent decree imposed on the LAPD largely as a result of the Rampart scandal.

When he started as Long Beach police chief in 2010, McDonnell had to win over a rank-and-file suspicious of an outsider from the LAPD. He is now popular among his police officers and has built strong relationships with community leaders, but his tenure has been marred by several controversial officer-involved shootings.

As a member of the Citizens Commission on Jail Violence, McDonnell helped devise an influential set of recommendations for the county jails, many of which have been implemented. McDonnell has said he supports a citizen oversight commission that would supplement the new inspector general in monitoring the Sheriff’s Department.

For more news about the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, follow @cindychangLA. She can be reached at cindy.chang@latimes.com.