Elections are often about change.

San Juan County voters demonstrated an overwhelming eagerness for it in the administration of their sheriff’s office.

In a first-ever bid for public office, deputy Ron Krebs gained an insurmountable lead on election night and, after the ballot-counting dust had settled, earned a four-year term at the top of the county’s most visible law enforcement agency with a runaway win in a hotly contested sheriff’s race.

Krebs, an eight-year veteran of the force and former deputy guild president, amassed 4,736 of 7,393 votes cast in the 2014 sheriff’s contest, a 64 percent margin of victory. The sheriff-elect proved a hot commodity even before final results were tallied.

“My phone literally exploded,” Krebs said. “I’ve gotten a lot of calls from a lot of different department heads, like the prosecutor and auditor, and I’ll be meeting with all of them as soon as we can. There’s a transition that needs to take place.”

The sheriff-elect will be sworn into office at the beginning of the new year, along with the winners of all other local races. He will be joined by the winners of the only two other contested county races, Joan White, reelected to a third term as county clerk, and first-time public office seeker and now treasurer-elect Rhonda Pederson.

The 47-year-old Krebs will inherit 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 earmarked for jail expenses. At full staffing, the department consists of 21 deputies, detectives and field corrections officers, nine dispatch employees and four other employees.

A non-partisan position, the sheriff earns an annual salary of $103,595.

From the outset, Krebs campaigned aggressively, pulling few punches and contending that a lack of leadership and communication by his opponent, Sheriff Rob Nou, had led to sagging morale within departmental ranks. An unprecedented and near unanimous endorsement of his election bid by the deputy’s guild appeared to bolster the planks of the Krebs’ campaign.

Although a relative newcomer to law enforcement at the local level, Krebs maintains that his leadership and administrative skills, honed in private industry (he’s a former senior manager for Les Schwab) and as a deputy and emergency first-responder, will translate well into managing the sheriff’s department.

“Leadership is leadership and administration is administration regardless of the field you’re in,” he said. “It’s the same no matter where you are. In business, it’s about your customers. At the sheriff’s office, we’re here to serve the public.”

Results of the 2014 election signal a reversal of fortune in just four years time for first-term incumbent Rob Nou. In 2010, he drew 66 percent of the vote to become San Juan County’s first new sheriff in more than two decades, succeeding Bill Cumming.

Nou came into the 2014 campaign carrying a long list of law enforcement credentials. A graduate of the FBI academy, he joined the sheriff’s department in 2008 as a Lopez Island-based deputy 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.

In his reelection bid, however, he came into the campaign with a record to run on, or to run against (Nou, reportedly on vacation until early next week, was unavailable for comment).

Although Krebs won in a landslide, not all voters showed an eagerness for change. Nou outpolled his opponent in landslide-like numbers in his former backyard. Voters in Lopez Island’s two precincts preferred reelection of the incumbent by a combined total of 1,066 to 239 votes.

With a first-ever election win in hand and two months in which to prepare to take the helm, Krebs cited communication as key to a smooth transition and in upholding promises made on the campaign trail.

“It’ll be more of an information gathering effort to start,” he said. “I’ll sit down with all the major department heads and other agencies that rely on the sheriff’s office, like emergency services, fire departments and DVSAS, to find out how we can better serve them.”