Exploring the staying power of elected sheriffs – a preliminary analysis

A closer look at the incumbency advantages and campaign expenditures of America's elected sheriffs.

by Alex Clark, August 24, 2017

With the recent electoral defeat of long-time Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County (Phoenix) Arizona, and the retirement of two long-time sheriffs in western Massachusetts where the Prison Policy Initiative is based, it seems more timely than ever to take a closer look at America’s elected sheriffs. I chose to look through the twin lenses of incumbency and campaign expenditures in order to understand more about candidates and the larger election system.

Already being in office — incumbency — is a tremendous political advantage, but how common is serving for 24 years like Joe Arpaio, 32 years like Hampshire County (Mass.) Sheriff Robert Garvey, or 42 years like Hampden County (Mass.) Sheriff Michael Ashe? My research suggests that those terms are not without peers, but that most sheriffs do not have the same extreme incumbency advantages. The average time in office is about 10 years.

For the 200 largest jails in the U.S., I collected the name of the current sheriff, his/her time served, and where available, the same information for the previous sheriffs:

(One unrelated point I stumbled across during this research was how often sheriffs were found guilty of crimes during or after their careers as sheriff, for offenses ranging from corruption and tax evasion to indecent exposure and murder. As an aid to future researchers, I flagged each of those sheriffs with an asterisk.)

Another way that sheriffs exercise political power is through campaign expenditures. I collected the data for the 13 largest counties that have elected sheriffs, plus Alameda County in California because of separate research we did on Sheriff Greg Ahern. This data was much harder to collect because it requires aggregating campaign finance reports for multiple time periods and multiple committees, but is a good starting point for exploring how much sheriffs’ elections cost:

The biggest expenditures came from Sheriff Joe Arpaio who spent $22 million over the course of his career. In the most recent 2016 election, Arpaio spent 8 times as much as challenger Paul Penzone, and lost. Even taking into account more “modest” campaigns, the average expenditures of a sheriff over his/her career is nearly 2 million dollars and just looking at a single four year campaign cycle, average expenditures top $600,000.

Now of course, expenditures will vary for lots of reasons, including the expenses of a given media market, whether there is a well-heeled opponent, and so forth. Hopefully, this chart serves as a starting point for a discussion of whether and how to hold sheriffs more accountable.