Diaz & Gauger In A Republican Primary For Palm Beach County Sheriff

My vote counts paper sticker on medical face mask to illustrate election dispute

Photo: BackyardProduction / iStock / Getty Images

The race for Palm Beach County Sheriff is in our Election Spotlight.

Democrat Incumbent Sheriff Ric Bradshaw is in a primary and we heard from him and his opponent last month. You can hear those interviews here.

There are also two candidates in the Republican primary. Cuban-born Lauro Diaz came to Palm Beach County as a boy and served in the U.S. Army as military police officer.

He was a commander with PBSO and was most recently deputy chief for the Bartow Police Department.

"The first thing we need to do honestly is we need a full audit of the budget. There hasn't, to my knowledge, there hasn't been an audit on the budget for many many many years."

Diaz says he would be a 'law and order sheriff' while he claims his opponent, former PBSO Chief Deputy Michael Gauger, would run the agency through social services.

Diaz also talks about an incident that happened during a recent debate on Zoom, when Gauger could be heard using profanity aimed at Diaz.

"If he wants to curse me out, he has to live with that. All I criticized him for was I said 'You can't always just take credit when things go right and blame everybody else when things go wrong, when you are the second in charge for 16 years and you refuse to take any responsibility. That's a shame.' And he lost his temper so that's between him and God and anybody else who wants to listen to it."

We were hoping to have Gauger on, so we could ask him about that incident and allegations that he is falsely claiming to have served in the military.

A political action committee is running an ad that states Gauger never got past initial processing into the Army after being drafted.

After responding to our initial request, Gauger didn't reply to future emails and phone calls asking to set up a time for an interview. Should he reach back out, we'll post it here.


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