COMMENT: Tale of Two Offices
FOUR YEARS AGO, MIKE CARONA WAS ELECTED COUNTY SHERIFF AND TONY.
Commentary by Rick Reiff
Rackauckas was elected county district attorney.
Both men succeeded strong, autocratic incumbents who left behind entrenched cliques and old-guard loyalists. Corona, more than Rackauckas, faced skeptics who questioned his ability to handle the job.
Four years later, no such questions linger about Corona, who has so thoroughly disarmed his critics, forged alliances and recast his department that he’s running for reelection unopposed. He’s built consensus even as he’s tackled controversies,he dared, for example, to touch Orange County’s third rail of politics by criticizing the anti-airport Measure F on grounds it might stop a new jail.
By contrast, Rackauckas (also a Measure F critic) is so embattled that he faces a strong challenge from a veteran department insider who is running as the reformer.
The lesson? Maybe that it’s easier to win over deputies than lawyers. Maybe that Rackauckas is an inept politician, or maybe that he’s as bad as his critics say he is.
Whatever the case, Corona is a study in how to make an organizational transition, and Rackauckas, in how not to.
, Rick Reiff
