During a Republican sheriff’s-candidate forum inside a gated Mission Viejo community in late March, the audience voiced concerns about the federal government limiting water supplies to California communities. Bill Hunt, the former sheriff’s lieutenant turned PI, grabbed a microphone, then stood and gazed confidently around the room before offering his solution. “I’d put together an armed posse of deputies at the shut-off value,” said a dead-serious Hunt, winning generous applause from the Casta Del Sol Republican Club. He knew, he told me later, that his confrontational stance would win over the elderly crowd.