Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, one of the Republican candidates for governor of California, met a woman on the side of the road as he walked around Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.
“I’m waiting for the sun to come out of the clouds. I’m getting sunburned,” said a woman Tuesday morning, lying in her jacket on the cold concrete, denying that any drug use was taking place in a nearly 50-block area of downtown Los Angeles. “This is what we do here in California.”
Bianco and Kate Monroe, CEO of VetComm, chat with a woman on the sidewalk as they stroll Skid Row.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Bianco shook his head, and as he left he said that it was unlikely that the woman wasn’t playing with methamphetamine or something. He said it is immoral for state leaders to allow people to live in such conditions, and he promised to clean up Skid Row within four years if he is elected Governor in November.
“Why on God’s green earth, why would we allow this to happen?” Later said Bianco. “And why would you have something you call Skid Row, that you just accept, instead of doing something to fix … these people’s lives.”
Bianco blamed the crisis on waste, fraud and mismanagement under Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and previous elected officials, say they have failed to address the issue effectively. He is one of the critics who point to the state’s 2024 study that found the state spent $24 billion to fight homelessness in the past five years without seeing results.
A spokesman for Newsom disputed the details of such charges.
“There is no ‘missing’ $24 billion due to homelessness. Every amount is accounted for,” said Newsom spokeswoman Izzy Gardon. “What the report found was that not all federal programs required residents to report, at the time, how those dollars improved the outcomes of homelessness. Gov. Newsom has changed the law to address this long-standing issue.”
Bianco also pledged to use existing laws against drug trafficking, human trafficking, prostitution and other crimes to clean up these areas, while giving addicts and mentally ill offenders the option of going to jail or entering treatment programs.
Democrats responded that Bianco was not offering practical solutions to an intractable problem.
Bianco talks with Antonio Fuller, left, and John Shepar.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
“Chad Bianco is the perfect example of a hat-loving, no-bullshit politician with tough talk and no solutions,” said state Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks. “That’s not what the voters of California want in our next governor.”
Throughout his campaign, Bianco relied on his role as a legislative leader. On Tuesday, as his teammates filmed a video after his visit to Skid Row, he pulled up the hem of his T-shirt to reveal his Riverside County sheriff’s badge.
Amid scenes of despair, chaos and insults, Bianco was surrounded by a throng of invited media.
Los Angeles Police Department vehicles were often seen nearby as the group trampled through sewage, used condoms, roadside fires, open drug use and drug dealing, naked women, and people screaming and shouting.
People circle Skid Row on Tuesday.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Monroe talks to Emilio Marroquin.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Bianco was accompanied by veteran homeless advocate Kate Monroe, who handed out envelopes containing $5 bills and cigarettes to the homeless as an incentive to speak. Some did not take this gift well.
“Get out of my face, get out of my face, you’re giving me a cigarette,” said the woman. Monroe replied, ‘I’ll give you five bucks. The woman said again, “Get out of my face.”
But others were more responsive, including Emilio Marroquin.
The 42-year-old suspect said he started drinking when he was young as he had problems being gay in a Christian home. He did not go out until his father, who is a pastor, passed. He said his drinking got out of control, leading friends and family to abandon him. After Marroquin finally got off the streets eight years ago, he said, he started using crystal meth and crack, and explained that the cuts on his hand were the result of beatings for failing to pay drug bills.
After hearing that Marroquin had been living in shelters for a while, Bianco asked him about the difficulty of transitioning from living on the streets to sheltered housing, then spoke to a passing social services provider who identified himself as SR.
“We need a new change. We need something other than what we’ve been hearing for the past, I don’t know, 20 years or more,” Bianco said, to which Bianco replied that “he has more courage, more passion and more dedication and more heart than almost anybody to be able to come here and do this.”
Bianco greets a man passing by Sikilid.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
The Riverside County sheriff’s appearance on Skid Row comes as the 2026 gubernatorial race begins to see some momentum.
A crowded field of popular though little-known Democrats is vying for a top-two finish in the June primary. If they all stay in the race, Democrats may split the vote and allow a much smaller number of Republican candidates to win one of the seats.
Bianco’s top GOP rival, former Fox News commentator and British political strategist Steve Hilton, held a rainy day news conference Monday in front of the California Department of Employment Development in San Francisco to highlight allegations of fraud in state government.
Saying that Newsom has turned the state into “Califraudia,” Hilton and GOP Representative Herb Morgan called on the US Department of Justice and other government officials to investigate waste and fraud in state spending.
“This gets to that question that every Californian is asking: How come we have the highest taxes in the country? They’ve doubled the California state budget in the last five years, and it’s all very bad,” Hilton said. “We have very bad results in America. How is that possible, that they spend so much money and we get so little? … We will get to the bottom of this when we are elected.”
