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E-mail StoryYoungblood wins sheriff's race
| Wednesday, Nov 8 2006 12:17 AM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Nov 8 2006 6:51 AM
A country band bathed a packed Buck Owens Crystal Palace in the strains of “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail” and “The Streets of Bakersfield” as Donny Youngblood took the lead in the race for Kern County sheriff.
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At the Crystal Palace Tuesday night, Donny Youngblood was in good spirits as early returns had him leading incumbent sheriff Mack Wimbish.
Incumbent sheriff Mack Wimbish appeared somber as he waited to do a television interview Tuesday night. Wimbish lost to challenger Donny Youngblood.
He never gave it up.
Voters ousted Sheriff Mack Wimbish Tuesday. Youngblood claimed nearly 60 percent of the vote while Wimbish received just over 40 percent.
Youngblood, a retired sheriff’s commander, said he will spend his first 100 days in office building a command team.
“There’s no quick fix. We have to sit down and become a team,” he said. “I’m an outsider now. I’ve been gone for four years. I can’t just go in there and start making decisions. That’s the mistake that was made before.”
Across an alley, at the Best Western hotel, a quiet banquet room housed a sober group of Wimbish supporters.
Wimbish said he failed to get the voters to understand the huge strides he’s made improving the Sheriff’s Department in the past four years.
“It means the voters have to want another change,” he said.
Former Sheriff Carl Sparks, who endorsed Youngblood before the June primary, said Youngblood has to rally the troops and “right the ship.”
“Mack’s a good guy, he’s just not a leader,” Sparks said.
Youngblood must bond with deputies and convince them to “bust their butts” for him, he said.
Youngblood, endorsed by most of the major law enforcement unions in Kern County, challenged Wimbish’s handling of staff shortages, gang and drug enforcement and department operations.
Wimbish countered by listing his accomplishments — including re-introducing the lieutenant’s rank and getting mobile data computers installed in sheriff’s vehicles.
Wimbish reminded voters that he has won concessions from the Kern County Board of Supervisors that will begin to refill the Sheriff’s Department’s depleted ranks next year.
But Youngblood said the changes came too late, starting only when the election began to loom.
Wimbish said the county was drained of cash in the first years of his term. He laid the groundwork for the rebuilding effort during those years, he said, and launched it once there was money to power it.
Youngblood commended Wimbish for replacing supervisors at the downtown jail after inmate James Moore was allegedly beaten to death by detention deputies.
But he said the sheriff hasn’t done enough to preserve morale in the detention deputies’ ranks or soften the image of those deputies as second-class peace officers.
The pair disagreed on how well the battle against drugs, gangs and violence has been going.
They agreed, though, on how to conduct their contest — as gentlemen.
Neither man is a candidate for sainthood and their mutual pasts could have turned the contest into a bloody brawl.
Both men knew that.
So they politely declined to comment on issues that other politicians would have gleefully used against their opponents.
Observers called the race boring.
But in the end, Wimbish and Youngblood stuck to the issues and fought to portray themselves as the better leader for the Sheriff’s Department.
Wimbish said he would be willing to help Youngblood transition into the leadership of the Sheriff’s Department.
“He may not want any of it,” Wimbish said. “But I’d do anything at all for the Sheriff’s Department and Kern County.”