Sandra Hutchens knows there are wolves at the door, hungry and clawing to get at her.
But if the thought bothers Orange County's rookie sheriff, she keeps it well hidden. Appointed last June to fill out the term of Michael S. Carona, who had stepped down months earlier after being indicted on federal corruption charges, Hutchens is more convinced than the day she took the job that she's the right person for it, and is primed, at 54, to make her first run for elective office next year when she goes after a full four-year term.
Last month, Carona was sentenced to 66 months in federal prison for witness tampering. If only symbolically, the sentence would seem to close once and for all the most notorious chapter in Orange County law enforcement history and let Hutchens, free of distractions, put her stamp on a job that long has favored incumbents. Her two elected predecessors -- Carona and Brad Gates -- held the job for a combined 33 years. Gates succeeded a sheriff who had the job for 28 years.
Ah, but those wolves.
Asked to quantify the size of her political opposition, Hutchens replies, "Internally or externally?"
The response sounds more ominous than she means it, because she doesn't think there's a vast conspiracy afoot. "I think it's a pretty small group," she said, generally lumping them into camps of people upset with her reversal of Carona's more liberal position on giving out concealed weapons permits and issuing guns and badges to professional volunteers who lent services to the department. That Carona gave some to friends and others in exchange for political favors formed part of the criminal allegations against him.
What connects the camps, Hutchens said, is an unhappiness with their decreased access to the sheriff's office.
Trying to assess someone's election chances a year before the primary is akin to tracking the movement of a ship on the horizon. Hutchens' campaign consultant, Dave Gilliard, said he's not convinced she'll even be opposed in 2010.
Hutchens chuckled at the mention of it. "I don't want to assume I won't," she said. "I want to be prepared for the fact that I will."
Hutchens, the county's first female sheriff, appeared affable and relaxed, even when asked if she would name names of her detractors -- a question many politicians would sidestep. She quickly tossed out a couple, including former Carona advisor and onetime state GOP party Chairman Michael Schroeder. She didn't name the Board of Supervisors, but she could have -- some have joined in the critique of aspects of her first year.
