The sins of the Acorn, sheriff


Here is the real reason that Sheriff Bill Ayub was soundly defeated.

The local media, including this publication, did their very best to ignore the elephant in the room when it came to the hotly contested election for Ventura County sheriff, but, thankfully, the voters did not.

Sheriff Ayub is now going to be replaced by Jim Fryhoff for many reasons, but the one which was forced under the media radar, largely because the news media was complicit in Ayub’s sins, was his outrageous decision-making during the blatant overreaction to COVID-19 in spring and summer 2020.

Ayub became the hired gun of our out-of-control, unelected health czar, Dr. Robert Levin, using his staff to close our public beaches/pools and private golf courses/tennis courts, even though these were literally the safest places anyone could have been.

Proactively preventing people from going to these places, at enormous financial cost to the county, was a direct violation of our most basic rights as citizens.

For this reason alone, Ayub deserved to lose his job so that these same outrages will hopefully never be duplicated in Ventura County.

No matter how much the news media pretends that Ayub’s loss is not a resounding condemnation of Dr. Levin, nothing will ever change the reality that if Ayub had not blindly followed Levin’s grossly misguided directions, he would very likely still be our sheriff.

Congratulations to the voters for sending the right message about what kind of place we want Ventura County to be. John Ziegler Camarillo