Elections are often about change.
San Juan County voters demonstrated an eagerness for it, in the administration of their Sheriff’s office.
In a first-ever bid for public office, deputy Ron Krebs grabbed a sizable lead in a hotly contested 2014 sheriff’s race. Krebs, an eight-year veteran of the force and former deputy guild president, collected 3,372 votes of 5211 ballots tallied on election night, earning 64.71 percent of the Nov. 4 early election returns.
The next ballot count will be at 5 p.m. on Nov. 5.
For first-term incumbent Rob Nou, the election night results signal a decided turnaround from the same race four years ago. He drew 66 percent of the vote in 2010 to become the county’s first new sheriff in more than two decades on the heels of that landslide victory at the ballot box.
Four years later, Krebs made leadership and communication, or the lack of it, the centerpiece of his campaign. He vowed to mend and to restore lines of communication within the department and with other agencies that regularly deal with the sheriff’s office. He pledged to create a stronger bond between the department and the public it serves as well.
The department’s rank-and-file rallied around Krebs’ run for office, with the guild backing his campaign in an unprecedented and near unanimous endorsement of his election bid.
The sheriff oversees a department of about 35 employees and a yearly budget of $4.9 million, including $2.7 million for department operations, $1 million for dispatch, $800,00 for Emergency Management and nearly $400,000 for the jail. At full staffing, the department consists of 21 deputies, detectives and field corrections officers, nine dispatch employees, and four other employees.
An elected, non-partisan position, the sheriff earns an annual salary of $103,595.
As a first-term incumbent, Nou came into the campaign carrying a long list of credentials. A graduate of the FBI academy, he joined the sheriff’s department as a Lopez-Island based deputy in 2008 and with 33 years of law enforcement experience in tow, including four years as police chief in Burns, Ore., and long tenure as an administrative sergeant in Oregon’s Yamhill County.
