Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco Trails In Race For CA Governor

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco was trailing in the race for California governor.

As of 11 p.m. Tuesday, the Trump-supporting firebrand sheriff had garnered just 11.2% of statewide ballots counted, putting him well behind GOP rival Steve Hilton and Democrats Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer.

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The top-two finishers of the June 2 Statewide Primary Election will go on to battle it out in the November general election.

See the latest statewide results for the governor's race here.

Bianco declared his candidacy in the winter of 2025 and has carried his campaign beyond the county's boundaries, netting relatively high poll numbers this year, with recent surveys showing him consistently in the top five out of the 61 candidates listed on the primary ballot.

Early results from Riverside County elections officials show Bianco as the leading candidate. As of 11 p.m. Tuesday, he was at the top of the pack with 27.7% of ballots counted. Becerra was a close second with 24.64%.

Hilton had been a front-runner during the campaign, alongside Becerra, a decades-long politician in the Golden State.

Bianco had cast himself as the conservatives' choice, staking out positions on energy, immigration, housing and public safety.

He called for increasing "penalties on repeat offenders ... to keep dangerous criminals off our streets," while bolstering "legal aid and mental health services for crime victims."

The sheriff made border security a priority in his platform, saying California's de facto "sanctuary state policies" should be abolished to combat human trafficking and stanch the influx of illegal drugs.

The two-term sheriff stirred controversy earlier this year when he began procuring search warrants and seizing tens of thousands of Riverside County ballots cast in the 2025 special election, after a civic watchdog group provided volunteer audits indicating discrepancies in the tabulation.

That led to a brief court battle between the sheriff and state prosecutors, who wanted the seizures stopped. Bianco voluntarily suspended the investigation.

He has been accused of overplaying or posturing in public, including during the downtown Riverside anti-law enforcement riots of 2020 when he took a knee alongside Black Lives Matter demonstrators, and more recently when he initially suggested that his deputies had foiled a planned assassination attempt on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, during the candidate's appearance at a Coachella Valley rally in October 2024.

The man at first accused of having criminal intent, Vem Miller of Las Vegas, turned out to be a Trump supporter who had brought firearms with him into a VIP parking lot near the rally venue. He openly declared them to the first deputy he encountered while driving into the lot. Bianco later backtracked on his original allegations.

Hilton, who has been endorsed by Trump, has spent most of his career as a political strategist and observer.

The Englishman worked for former Prime Minister David Cameron, after which he moved to California, where he's resided for close to 15 years.

"I've always believed that people, families, communities — and businesses — do better when they have the power to chart their own course," he said on his campaign website. "That means building a foundation of security and opportunity ... That's what government should be doing, not bossing you around with endless rules, regulations and bureaucracy."

Hilton made tax reductions, spending limits and curbs on bureaucratic red tape some of his central campaign themes.

Other than Bianco, Steyer is one of the candidates who was among the more active in Riverside County, mainly courting unions for endorsements.

—City News Service contributed to this report.