Who Will Challenge Sheriff Chad Bianco in 2022?

Will former Sheriff Stan Sniff or Cathedral City Mayor Raymond Gregory Challenge Sheriff Chad Bianco?

Candidate hopefuls have announced their intentions for state Assembly and  state Senate, but the one question on some people’s minds, particularly Democrats’, is who will Challenge Sheriff Chad Bianco — if anyone.

The speculation heightened this week when a retired Captain with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department floated some names in an opinion column for Uken Report. Among the names he mentioned were former Sheriff Stan Sniff and Cathedral City Mayor Raymond Gregory. 

Gregory, who retired from the Sheriff’s Department in 2017 and has the knowledge and experience, confirmed he has been approached to challenge the sheriff, but has declined.

Raymond served more than 27 years with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, before retiring. During his tenure with the Sheriff’s Department,  He held many ranks and worked a variety of locations and functions, including patrol, jails, as a courtroom deputy, an internal affairs investigator, eventually rising to the rank of Assistant Sheriff.

Locally, Gregory served as commander of the Sheriff’s Indio Station as it transitioned to its current location in Thermal. As part of that assignment, he served as Chief-of-Police for the cities of Coachella and La Quinta. Previously, he also served as commander of the jail in Indio, and before that as the Assistant Chief for the La Quinta Police Department.

“I found it very complimentary, but I am frankly not interested in the job,” Gregory said, adding that it is a high-stress job.

Gregory said he has privately made some suggestions for a challenger to Bianco because the incumbent sheriff “is not up to the job, He has got to go.”

Sniff declined to be interviewed for this story, but don’t expect to see him launch a campaign. Close acquaintances of Sniff indicated to Uken Report that he is “very happy in retirement these days after literally working 24/7 for so many years.”

“It would be pretty hard to talk him out of retirement these days,” they said on condition of anonymity. “He is pretty skeptical that the public would even support it after being so completely out of the public eye for years.”