NC election results, criminal justice edition: races for county prosecutor and sheriff

A non-comprehensive roundup of election results that will affect criminal justice across North Carolina

As with every election cycle, there were many down-ballot races across North Carolina that could alter how criminal justice is meted out in the Old North State. 

Despite the onslaught of campaign ads, US Senators and Representatives are not the elected officials who will reduce crime. Criminal justice is a local issue. To that end, sheriff candidates from all 100 of North Carolina’s counties were on the ballot this Election Day, as were district attorneys. 

A by-no-means-comprehensive list of interesting results are below, but it should also be noted that all the politicking over crime this election cycle is misleading, at best, as crime data is much more complicated than political races make it seem. Democrats did not defund the police. crime is nowhere near the record highs fear-mongered by Republicans. 

Now onto the noteworthy races and their preliminary results, which won’t be finalized until absentee ballots are counted and provisional ballots are reviewed. The State Board of Elections is scheduled to certify the results Nov. 29.

Wake County District Attorney

Democratic Incumbent Nancy Lorrin Freeman easily beat Republican Jeff Dobson, winning 61% of the vote. Embattled in a political controversy regarding an investigation into an ad from Attorney General Josh Stein, Freeman also has been criticized for her support of the death penalty and for prosecuting people charged for low-level marijuana offenses. 

Dobson, who graduated from law school only in 2019, told The News & Observer Freeman was wasting taxpayer money chasing convictions in trials and seeking long sentences without accounting for defendants’ mitigating circumstances or criminal histories. Freeman, for her part, said changes to the justice system must be made collaboratively, or else public safety could be at risk. 

Forsyth County District Attorney

Republican Jim O’Neill won 51% of the vote in his race against Democrat Denise Hartsfield. O’Neill, the incumbent, hadn’t faced a challenger in 13 years. Hartsfield spent 19 years as a district court judge and ran on a platform emphasizing a more holistic response to the root causes of crime than the “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” ethos of the mass incarceration era. 

O’Neill, meanwhile, ran a more traditional district attorney campaign, telling the Winston-Salem Journal that Hartsfield’s policies would lead to “lawlessness, destruction and rampant crime.” He also proposed instituting a curfew for young people because of an alleged surge in crime committed by youth, despite the Winston-Salem Police Department data showing juvenile crime decreasing by 53% between 2017 and 2021.

Alamance County Sheriff

Incumbent Republican Sheriff Terry S. Johnson faced his first challenger since 2010, Democrat Kelly T. White. In 2012 the U.S. Department of Justice found that Johnson discriminated against Latinos, concluding that the sheriff’s office of an “egregious pattern of racial profiling.” 

Last year Policy Watch reported that civil rights groups sued Johnson and other Alamance County officials, in federal court over limits on protests outside the courthouse and around the Confederate monument in Graham. A legal settlement allowed demonstrators areas that the Sheriff’s Office had made off limits. 

Despite his record of violating civil rights, Johnson prevailed again Tuesday, winning 58% of the vote. 

Wake County Sheriff

Voters chose not to give Republican Donnie Harrison his old job back. Harrison had been Wake County Sheriff from 2002 to 2018, and but lost to Democrat Willie Rowe, who pledged to restrict the department’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Harrison told Bolts earlier this year he wouldn’t renew the 287(g) program he supported when he was in office, a nod to the organizing efforts of immigrant-rights activists.

Rowe, who is Black, won earned 53% of the vote.

Columbus County Sheriff

Republican Jody Greene resigned last month after the district attorney filed a petition for his removal because of racist comments Greene had made about his Black employees in a phone call that was incidentally recorded by his opponent, Democrat Jason Soles. Greene’s resignation meant he could stay on the ballot this Election Day, giving him an opportunity to win back the seat he has held since 2018.

It worked. Greene won 54% of the vote. 

The district attorney has said he will again file a petition for removal if Greene were to win reelection. 

Pasquotank County Sheriff

Democrat Eddie Graham challenged Incumbent Republican Tommy Wooten after Wooten’s sheriff deputies shot an unarmed Black man last year. Organizers held daily protests in the aftermath calling for accountability for Wooten and the sheriffs’ office. Graham, who is Black, supported banning no-knock warrants and bringing mental health professionals on some emergency calls, an attempt to change the sheriffs’ offices de-escalation practices. 

Wooten won with 58% of the vote.

Forsyth County Sheriff

Democratic Incumbent Bobby Kimbrough Jr. handily beat his opponent, Republican Ernie Leyba, earning 65% of the vote. Leyba worked in law enforcement in Forsyth County and other counties in North Carolina, as well as in California. He stressed the importance of community policing in an interview with the Winston-Salem Journal, and said voters would see him on the street and get to know him if he were elected. Kimbrough has extensive law enforcement experience himself, starting his career in 1984. He worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration from 1995 to 2016. 

John Elliott Neville, a 56-year-old man, died on Dec. 4, 2019 after being held in Kimbrough’s jail. Video footage showed Neville had been held in a restraint position for over an hour, telling officers he couldn’t breathe. Five detention officers and a nurse were charged with involuntary manslaughter in July 2020. Neville’s death sparked protests across Winston-Salem in the summer of 2020. Kimbrough told The Journal that there was no violence during the demonstrations. 

For other noteworthy criminal justice races across the state and country, see this guide from Bolts, and this post by Christopher Cooper, a professor and the director of the Public Policy Institute at Western Carolina University.

To look up the results of these and other races across North Carolina, click here.