‘I am Running for Governor’

Sheriff Chad Bianco Announces He is Running for Governor

RIVERSIDE — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a two-term sheriff, is running to be the next governor of California in November 2026, catapulting him into the largest political arena in which he has ever run —a plan he now tells Uken Report that has been two, maybe three years, in the making. In the end, it came down to serving a greater purpose than himself, he said.

“If you’re doing the right thing, then it’s easy to get people to come alongside of you. And I think that that’s what Sacramento is lacking,”” Bianco told Uken Report during a phone interview from Sacramento.

Endorsing Bianco for governor of California was a no-brainer for Joy Miedecke, president of the East Valley Women Republican Patriots.

“Well, it’s actually very easy,” Miedecke texted to Uken Report. “First, all the years he spent in law and order; second, the fact that he fought for our district attorney’s proposition to get on the ballot to restore penalties to criminals; third, the fact that he’s been blatant in calling out those who have done so much irreversible damage to our state. If he can take care of the fourth largest county in California’s budget for the Sheriff’s Department and keep it in the (black) and have so many of his officers that look up to him and confess that he is the best at leadership, then why should we think anybody else could ever make a better governor of California than Chad Bianco.”

Tom Freeman, who was the Executive Officer for the Sheriff’s Department when Bianco was making his way through the ranks, said. “He is an exceptional man of integrity, faith and justice.”

Though easy to endorse, running for governor was not an easy decision for Bianco, he said.

“I will have to admit that, over the last five months maybe, I’ve tried to talk myself out of it,” he said. I’ve tried to talk myself out of it, being selfish saying that ‘I know I have the perfect job. I live in the perfect county with the perfect job. I have a fantastic department. They love me. Our residents like me. The polling that people are doing shows astronomical support for me. My life is perfect here. So, in a selfish way, I could sit here and do nothing, keep my job, keep doing what I’m doing, and life would go on great for me.’

“In the end, I realized that never in my life have I ever done anything for myself,” Bianco said. “What makes me happy is doing things for other people, whether it’s my kids, whether it’s my wife, my neighbors, my friends, or the residents of Riverside County, when I can provide them better public safety. That’s what makes me happy. So, it’s back to, I guess, what was instilled in me by my dad, ‘You just help other people, and it all comes back around to you.'”

The conservative sheriff is making the formal announcement this morning, putting an end to years of speculation.

In the coming months, many people will try to slap a one-size-fits all label on him. Good luck with that; it won’t stick. Yes, he’s had some missteps. Those have been diced and spliced every which way. No need to regurgitate it today. There’s plenty of time for that.

Yes, he’s a conservative Donald Trump supporter. He is intelligent, graduating at the top of his class in 1993 after attending the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Academy. He joined the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department shortly after graduation. Bianco and his family attend Sandals Church in Riverside. He is a unique mold of morals, piss-and vinegar, heart, and empathy. He can be fun-loving, inspirational and more.

“I didn’t get involved for a year or year and a half out,” Bianco said. “But with everything that has happened, especially recently, I’ve come to the conclusion and the decision that the best thing I can do to ensure the best public safety in California, filter that into many other issues in California, to instill a little bit of truth, and common sense into Sacramento. So, I have decided that I will run for governor in 2026.”

“When you talk about everything going on, what do you mean?”

“So obviously for me it’s public safety,” Bianco said. “Everything I have done, even though people brand me as being political, and everything else, everything that I have ever done has involved public safety. Unfortunately, what I quickly found out after becoming Sheriff is, politics is what has made public safety in California decline. There has been a very disingenuous agenda that has changed the direction of public safety in California. And they disingenuously call it reform because we all want reform. Reform is a good thing. So, by them calling it criminal justice reform, everybody believes that’s a good thing. But in reality, it was completely pushing victims aside, having absolutely no compassion or care for victims. It has just become what I have referred to as a love affair with criminals. And we have come to a place in California where crimes are just not crimes anymore. And there is absolutely no punishment, or no consequence for anyone who is victimizing us and committing crimes.”

One of the things that bothers him most, he said, is the opposition,

“The Left will quickly make it about race and about racism. And the ironic thing for me is, the people that it hurts the worst are people of color,” his voice growing more passionate and intense as he speaks. “It’s our neighborhoods of color, our Hispanic community, our immigrant community, our Black community, they are the ones that are disproportionately influenced by crime. And all of these laws are protecting the criminals who victimize them. the people that they claim that they are there to help and there that they’re looking out for, they’re actually harming.”

The legislators will not listen to reason or common sense, or they will not think ahead of the unintended consequences of some of their decisions,” Bianco said

For the past decade, maybe even a little bit more than that, there has been in a severe decline in public safety, Bianco said.

He, along with many others, did everything possible to pass Proposition 26. One of the things that we found was, we were getting to a point maybe in the middle of 2023 that people were finally starting to realize that we were lied to about Proposition 47. They were finally learning that Prop 47 was a bad thing, and they had no idea.

There’s literally thousands of people have come to me and said, they know that they voted for Prop 47 back in the day because they remember it being called the safe schools and the safe streets. And now they realize that they contributed to the problem, because they had no idea what they were voting for. And it was because we were lied to. We were lied to by our government.

“For a law enforcement person, for me, my integrity is everything,” Bianco said. “Honesty is the pillar of my profession You can’t be a law enforcement officer if you are dishonest, if you mislead people, if you leave out information, if you hide evidence, all of those things. When I realized that the vast majority of our state government is dishonest, they mislead, they lie, including our attorney general. Prop 47 was pushed upon us by a lie from Kamala Harris at the time about what this proposition did, and about what it was going to do. So, over the years, it just kept building and building and building. And then because of my work, because of being the sheriff, I’m involved with bigger groups. I’m involved with our unions, our contractors, our electrical workers, our business organizations, our farming community.

“It always involves theft, but then it turns to their other issues. So, for instance, our farming community. The farming community, I had to substantially increase and form a rural crimes task force because our farmers out there in the valley were just being destroyed. Their livelihoods were being destroyed by theft. They’re losing their pumps; they’re losing the electrical wires. All of their irrigation systems and equipment and everything else, vehicles and equipment, everything being stolen. And to them, it was just a part of doing business. It was just a write-off. It was a business expense. But it became so bad that they were begging me for help. So, I stared the Rural Crimes Task Force and we really start helping them with that. I befriend them and now we’re in that relationship because we truly are helping them, then I learn about all their other issues. About regulations, about the fertilizer regulations, state mandates, state regulations, water that blithe having such horrible water issues.”

Farming is just being absolutely destroyed by a complete lack of water, Bianco continued. It’s all government regulation. It’s all on purpose. In the schools, I’m involved with school resource officers, and we’re fighting to keep school resource officers in our schools. And then on the side, the teachers and the administrators come to me saying that, this is all coming from Sacramento. This is all pushed from above. They don’t agree with it, they don’t want it, they know it’s dangerous, but this is the agenda that they have.

He’s on fire now.

“There’s no such thing as learning in schools anymore,” he said, speaking faster. “It has absolutely nothing to do with learning. We’ve done away with all of our test scores because we don’t want anyone to know that the adults are failing. It’s not the students that are failing; the adults are failing the students. The test scores don’t say that the kids are bad, they say that the teachers are bad. They say that the education system is bad. So, the education system did away with test scores. So now there’s no metric to say, we’re spending all of this money in our schools, and you’re failing our kids because our kids can’t read, our kids can’t write, our kids can’t do math. It all starts with public safety, but all of these other issues are being intertwined.”

“Then there’s construction companies, he said. It all starts with theft, and drugs, and the people that are on their building sites. Then I learn why it costs so much to build a house, and it all about regulation. People complain to me about trying to get a building permit in the county, and the red tape and the years. The Daycare center that my grandkids are in, they’ve been trying to open up a new daycare center, a new building, and they’ve been fighting with the county. It’s almost ready to go. They’re still waiting for permits, but it’s been eight years. Why?”

“For me, it’s about the dishonesty, it’s about the lies, it’s about the misleading, it’s about the secrecy, it’s about the lack of transparency, it’s about the complete absolute abuse and waste of our taxpayer money that no one knows where it goes to,” Bianco said. “I truly do believe that the only thing that we are lacking in this state is a leader. We’ve always elected Democrats, we’ve always elected a Republican, we elected Arnold because he was the Terminator, we elected Gavin because he’s a good-looking guy and a smooth talker. We’ve never elected a leader … I think Ronald Reagan was the last person that was truly, people felt he was a leader, and he was able to bring people alongside him for the common good, which that’s really what a leader is. We haven’t done that for a long time.”

As governor, his No. 1 push will be safety,

After that he said, he will focus on having the leadership ability to get people to come alongside me for the common good. And I’m not afraid of controversy. I’m not afraid of other suggestions. I change my mind all the time. People can convince me of something all the time.

“I am an unapologetic God-fearing man that loves my country, and I always will,” “he said. “I am a true American patriot. I love everything about this country. I love everything about our history, and I certainly live my life on Christian values, and have instilled those in my kids. And while I may not be like the typical Bible-thumping Christian, I certainly am unapologetic about it. It is what it is. I give all of the success in my life to that faith. And it’s how our family lives.”

Bianco and his wife Denise, who celebrate 25 years of marriage this year, have four children and four grandchildren.

Denise wants people to know her husband’s heart, not just his politics, and uses several examples to show it.

Here are just two:

• “One of my friends whose job took her to another state called me and asked if knew of a contractor who could build a retaining wall for her mom and dad who lived near me. Her dad was disabled, and her mom was trying to figure it out on her own and were worried because they couldn’t afford much.  A flood had washed away her back yard.  That weekend Chad and his dad built the retaining wall for them.”
• “He’s the kind of guy that if our server gives him the order wrong at a restaurant, he won’t say a word.  He will just say “oh I wanted to try this at some point anyway!”

“I am Chad’s biggest supporter and I’m so proud to be by his side while he takes on this endeavor,” Denise told Uken Report. “He is doing this for Californians. He is doing this to make things better for us, and for no other reason. Our life is perfect just as it is, but he lives life to stand up for other people, to protect those around him.  The tremendous amount of passion and support he has for victims of crime is something that no one could understand unless you see it.  He truly is a protector.  He is called to serve and make a difference.  It’s worth the sacrifice, “We are on this earth for a purpose, This is his purpose, so it makes it mine, too.”