UPDATE: Stewart to become first female sheriff of Doa Ana County

There’s a new sheriff in town: In Doña Ana County, she is the first woman.

After 8,000 absentee ballots were counted around 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Democrat Kim Stewart maintained her early lead, clinching the race 13 points ahead of Republican candidate and former sheriff Todd Garrison.

“One thing I learned in this is it’s all about people,” Stewart told ABC-7 on Tuesday night. “Signs don’t vote, money can’t you buy you all the votes you need.”

Stewart ousted incumbent Doña Ana County Sheriff Enrique Vigil in the Democratic Party Primary election.

The California native is a former internal investigator for Doña Ana County, who sued the county and won $1.2 million in a whistleblower lawsuit. Her background includes law enforcement work in California, where she worked on the Golden State Killer case.

“Ethical and moral decision making begins at the top and would be a hallmark of my administration,” Stewart said in a statement to the Las Cruces Sun News. “This would positively reflect on every member of the department and encourage others to seek similar paths as they enforce our laws.”

Stewart told the Sun News that by providing better training and more lateral options for deputies, “we can build an agency which has a solid and unified base.”

Former Doña Ana County Sheriff, Todd Garrison, was first appointed sheriff when Sheriff Juan Hernandez stepped down due to health issues in 2005. Garrison, a Republican, served the remainder of Hernandez’s term and was later elected to two four-year terms as sheriff of Doña Ana County. Termed out, Garrison was unable to seek reelection in 2014. Voters that year elected Enrique “Kiki” Vigil to office.

According to a document posted on Doña Ana County’s website, some of the highlights of Garrison’s term in office include: the expansion of the DWI program, the arrest of the suspect involved in the murder of Katie Sepich, and the prosecution of Gino Ferri, convicted for a triple homicide in Mesilla in 2010.

“This is a hard job and it’s even harder to find good people who are willing to do it for little pay,” Garrison said when he left office in 2014, “One of the hardest things to accept is that we will lose good, trained deputies to outside agencies willing to pay them more money.” That same problem continues to plague the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office, still losing deputies it trains and develops to other law enforcement agencies.