Bones once said “I don’t like Sheriffs. They’re elected. It’s a popularity contest, not based on qualifications for the job,” or words to that effect. But the candidates for Anoka County Sheriff are highly qualified law enforcement professionals.

The job of Sheriff for Anoka County, Minnesota is open, and we have two candidates running this year. They are Lieutenant Ron Bouley of Ramsey and Captain Jim Stuart of Andover, both of the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office. Which one should I vote for?

Your comments (below) will be welcome, and they could affect my vote or the Anoka county residents who read this blog (i.e., Amanda). For now, I have made a tentative decision.

Both candidates are very similar. Both have extensive and impressive training and education, both have impressive experience in law enforcement, both have administrative experience in law enforcement, both work for the department now and have served under a few different sheriffs, both have stated laudable goals and impressive endorsements.

Those were the important bits of information I could find, and I’ll come back to that later.

Both are veterans and both are members of a number of civic organizations, and both are upstanding members of their respective churches. These are not, to me, important features, other than their church membership … I think it would be a blast to have a atheist sheriff for a while … but other people may consider these things important.

The point is, both have the same set of qualifications, qualitatively, as it were. However, there are some differences in detail that could be used to decide.

Steward seems to have a more academic background, has achieved a much higher rank in the department, and his administrative experience includes the successful supervision of the very impressive (and very science oriented) Anoka County CSI lab (they don’t call it that, but you get the point). It is worth noting that in this state, the Sheriff’s department does a lot of the crime scene data collection and investigation, compared to some other states where the State Police seem to do more of that, so this is important. The strongest endorsement for Bouley seems to be the Retired Law Enforcement group, but Stuart seems to have more endorsements, including the Anoka County CID, Labor, and Commerce.

Therefore, this blog endorses, until I say otherwise, James Stuart for Anoka County Sheriff.

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