Chad Bianco has been Riverside County Sheriff since 2019, and he has spent those years making himself the most recognizable Republican in Southern California without holding any elected office that would normally produce that recognition. He publicly refused to enforce California’s COVID-19 lockdown orders, sued Governor Newsom over pandemic policies, and endorsed Donald Trump emphatically and repeatedly — in a county of 2.4 million people in the inland empire east of Los Angeles.
He is now running for governor of California.
The Californian Republican Situation
California is D+22. Gavin Newsom is term-limited. The Democratic primary is crowded with serious candidates — Kamala Harris’s attorney general Rob Bonta, former LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Congresswoman Katie Porter, and several others. The Republican primary’s most credible candidates are Bianco and Steve Hilton, the British-born former Fox News host and David Cameron adviser.
That’s the California Republican field in 2026: a Riverside sheriff and a TV personality. The state party’s long-term decline has produced a deep bench problem that has now left the most consequential gubernatorial election in recent California history — an open seat in the country’s largest state — without a Republican candidate who would be competitive in a neutral-environment year.
Why Bianco Polls Competitively
Recent polling shows a roughly even four-way race among leading candidates from both parties, which is both surprising and explicable. California’s all-party primary system — top two advance regardless of party — means Bianco needs to finish second out of a large field to reach the general election. In a multi-candidate primary where the Democratic vote splits several ways, a unified Republican first-choice vote can produce a top-two finish even in a state this blue.
His polling competitiveness reflects name recognition, a specific lane (law enforcement, anti-lockdown, Trump-aligned), and voter frustration with California’s housing crisis, homelessness, and crime — frustrations that are real and bipartisan even in a heavily Democratic state.
The General Election Problem
If Bianco reaches the November general, the math changes. A head-to-head race against the Democratic nominee in a D+22 state, in a year when California’s dominant Democratic coalition is mobilized, is a different computation than a primary. The state has not elected a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger’s second term in 2006, and Schwarzenegger was a unique candidate who can’t be replicated.
Bianco’s path to winning — not just participating — requires a Democratic collapse on turnout, a galvanizing issue that breaks the state’s partisan alignment, and a Democratic nominee who generates unusual opposition within their own coalition. None of those conditions is expected.
What to Watch
The June 2 primary. If Bianco makes it to the top two alongside a single Democratic candidate, the general will be watched nationally as a test of California’s partisan limits in an open-seat, incumbent-free cycle. If the Democratic vote consolidates early enough to push two Democrats to the top, the Republican primary becomes irrelevant to the fall contest — and Bianco’s campaign ends in June.