This story was originally published by Fresnoland.
If a Monday morning court ruling stands, then Fresno County Sheriff John Zanoni and District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp will serve two extra years on their current terms.
Fresno County Superior Court Judge D. Tyler Tharpe sided with the State of California and threw out recent voter-approved changes to the election cycles of Fresno County’s two top cops.
In his 21-page ruling handed down Monday, Tharpe said state law “preempted” Fresno County’s Measure A.
The ruling appears to end, at least for now, a three-year-old political fight between state Democrats and Fresno-area Republicans over which party gets the perceived inside lane advantages in California law enforcement races.
It wasn’t immediately clear Monday whether Fresno County would appeal the ruling, but the brief statement from the county’s press office appeared to leave the door open for “potential next steps.”
“The County of Fresno is disappointed with the Fresno County Superior Court’s ruling on Measure A, as Assembly Bill 759 dismisses the will and votes of Fresno County residents,” the release said “The Board of Supervisors will be discussing this decision and any potential next steps during the Closed Session at the next Board meeting on Tuesday, June 10, 2025.”
In a joint statement Monday afternoon, Zanoni and Smittcamp reiterated their longstanding criticisms of AB 759’s two-year extension on their respective terms — extensions they said were added without voter approval.
We continue to have serious concerns about the legislative process that led to the enactment of AB 759, which they said was rushed into law “with little to no opportunity for public review.”
“As a result, local governments and voters were excluded from a policy decision that directly affects the terms of their elected officials,” Smittcamp and Zanoni said in the statement.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office filed the lawsuit against Fresno County, issued a joint statement Monday with the Secretary of State’s Office, cheering the ruling.
“There is nothing more fundamental to American democracy than the right to vote and make your voice heard,” Bonta said in a statement. “With Measure A, Fresno County threatened to undermine that fundamental right, intentionally seeking to move elections for sheriff and district attorney to off years when voters are far less likely to show up and cast a ballot.”
“Today’s ruling helps ensure more voices are heard through the ballot box in Fresno County’s elections for district attorney and sheriff,” Secretary of State Shirley Weber said.
Meanwhile, at Fresno City Hall, City Attorney Andrew Janz — himself a prominent Democrat who was tasked by the City Council in 2023 to reach out to Bonta on the elections issue — cheered the judge’s Monday morning ruling.
“This ruling does not come as a surprise as Measure A clearly violated state law,” Janz said. “We applaud the Court for its ruling and congratulate Attorney General Bonta and his team for successfully litigating this case. Elections work best when more voters participate.”
How did we get here?
The wonky political fight sparked in 2022 when California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 759, a Democrat-led bill that set election cycles statewide for most local-level sheriff and district attorney races.
Specifically, the law requires those law enforcement races to be conducted on the presidential election cycle because, backers argued, that’s when voter turnout tends to be the greatest.
Critics of the law — mainly conservatives — said it was nothing more than a cynical attempt by state Democrats to manufacture advantages in law enforcement races that the liberal-leaning party frequently struggles to win even in deep blue California.
And the idea that greater voter turnout generally benefits the Democratic Party is a fairly old and frequently-debated belief nationally, but over the last two decades or so, Fresno County has essentially fit that pattern of higher voter turnout typically benefiting Democrats.
But AB 759 also made exceptions to the law for charter counties that, as of Jan. 1, 2021, specifically designated the law enforcement races for a different election cycle.
Fresno County’s charter did not address the election of the sheriff and district attorney by the 2021 deadline. But there were questions, even in the state legislature, about whether the state even had the authority to dictate elections to charter counties like Fresno.
Fresno County conservatives said “no,” and accused the state of overstepping. In response, Fresno voters adopted Measure A last year, which changed the county’s charter and moved the election cycles for the sheriff and district attorney back to the gubernatorial cycle.
The Democrat-led state Justice Department pushed back and sued Fresno County last year, arguing that greater voter participation in critical law enforcement races was essential to a healthy democracy.
Arguing over ‘terms’
In his ruling Monday, Tharpe concluded Fresno County’s authority to set the “terms” of law enforcement election does not include setting the election cycle, saying the county’s definition was “overbroad” and that courts “have interpreted the word ‘terms’ narrowly.”
“While the County does have the authority to set the terms of its elected officials,” the judge wrote, “it is not authorized under the California Constitution to set the dates on which the elections of local officials will be held.”
The judge also noted that Fresno County hadn’t bothered to set specific dates for law enforcement elections prior to the fuss over AB 759.
“Notably, in the past, the County never attempted to specify the years in which the elections of its officials would be held prior to the adoption of Measure A, and instead followed state law,” Tharpe wrote, “which at the time stated that the elections of county officials would be held in gubernatorial primary election years.”
Red vs. Blue plays out in court over Fresno County’s Measure A
Politics appeared very much in play at least at times during the nearly yearlong court case, but ultimately it was a Republican-appointed judge that sided with the Democrat-controlled Justice Department.
Tharpe — a Schwarzenegger appointee who made national headlines in 2020 when he sided with a conservative private religious school during the early months of the pandemic — was actually at least the third judge assigned to the law enforcement elections case.
The judge only received the assignment in late March, according to Fresno County Superior Court records, after procedural jockeying by both sides got two other judges thrown off the case.
Fresno County appeared to kick off the judicial shopping on March 13 when they filed a “peremptory challenge” — a legal maneuver under the state civil procedure code that essentially allows you to disqualify a judge from a case without having to prove bias.
In a March 13 court declaration, Fresno County Chief Deputy Counsel Peter Wall simply said he didn’t believe the judge assigned at the time would give the county a fair trial.
“Judge María G. Díaz is prejudiced against the County, or the interest of the County, so that I cannot, or believe that I cannot, have a fair and impartial trial or hearing before such judge,” Wall stated in the declaration.
Díaz is a Democrat who made her legal bones in pricey Los Angeles law firms and worked for Gloria Allred before Newsom appointed the Southern California lawyer to the Fresno County bench about six months ago.
The case then went to Judge Robert Whalen — a former conservative politician and Clovis City Councilmember who has clashed with Newsom before.
Four days later, citing the same civil code and boilerplate language, Bonta’s team played its get-out-of-judge-free card and disqualified Whalen, claiming he was prejudiced against the state.
Three days after that, the case landed in Tharpe’s lap. He heard arguments in April and took the case under advisement before issuing Monday’s ruling.
The Board of Supervisors next meets June 10 at the county Hall of Records.
Justice Department officials have not responded to questions about how much the Measure A litigation has cost taxpayers. A county spokesperson told Fresnoland that Fresno County had spent about $20,000 on the case as of mid-May.