After a campaign clouded with controversy, Republican and El Paso County Undersheriff Joe Roybal pulled ahead in a midterm race for the new El Paso County Sheriff. 

Preliminary results showed Roybal with 59.11% of the vote in the county, outpacing Democrat John Foley comfortably, with Foley garnering 40.89% of the total vote.  

“I am feeling very excited,” Roybal said. “We expect that lead to grow as the votes are counted.”

Roybal will replace current El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder who has served as the county’s sheriff since 2014. Roybal has been a member of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office since 1995. 

During Roybal’s campaign, he was called upon by El Paso County Republican Party Chairwoman Vickie Tonkins to withdraw from the race for violating Colorado election law when he allowed a local shooting range owner in February to offer a $5 discount at his shooting range to entice voters to sign Roybal’s petition to get onto the GOP primary ballot.

Ultimately, Roybal was permitted to stay in the election despite the campaign violation. 

Roybal’s campaign focused on adding new programs and incentives to bolster the number of deputies in the department, and on the quality of those deputies, and to expand the facilities and equipment used by the department.

“The increasing population of El Paso County must have an equally increasing law enforcement presence and service,” Roybal told The Gazette in October. 

El Paso County sheriff’s candidates discuss priorities

Roybal stated an additional goal of his if elected would be to “address bad legislation such as reducing penalties for fentanyl and efforts to discredit and disarm our police forces.” 

In recent years, the sheriff’s office has been peppered with lawsuits at a time of shifting public opinion about law enforcement.

One of the foremost lawsuits involved a $65,000 settlement in a federal class-action from the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado on behalf of six El Paso County jail inmates who alleged Elder’s “disordered, mismanaged” policies led to a COVID-19 outbreak that sickened more than 1,000 inmates and was the largest outbreak among Colorado jails and prisons.

As for Foley, his campaign centered around changing how the department recruits new deputies to the department and implementing programs to retain deputies within the department. 

“Recruitment and retention are fundamentally broken in the Sheriff’s Department,” Foley told The Gazette. “As a leader, I will use my decades of experience as a senior leader in Army recruiting to fix this issue.”

Another priority Foley intended to address was the county jail and its operating procedures. 

“As for the jail, it’s turned into the largest mental health facility in Colorado, and this needs to change,” Foley said. “We need to get out of the mental health business and focus on fighting crimes and illegal drug networks.”