Dan Gable, former wrestling coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes had this saying he framed: “The Longer Longer.”
His premise was that when things go well they continue to go well or when they go badly they continue to go badly until there is a catastrophic change.
In terms of the local election Tuesday that catastrophic change came in the form of Mike Justice elected as the new Sheriff of Union County.
We say that because for as far back as we can remember the northern part of the county has been instrumental in electing the county officials because they are a tight knit group that most of the time vote the same way.
Something switched in the stratosphere that apparently spawned a different outcome with voters where more residents from Jerome Township and Marysville took control wanting a solution over the staffing issues at the SO. We published a lot of articles detailing those employee problems that seemed to be central to the campaign.
The stories we wrote highlighted the fact that more deputies were leaving than could be hired to replace resulting in more overtime creating an unhealthy work environment. One example that we know of is Justice recently retired after 33 years at the SO even though he wanted to stay on. He told us his desire originally was to retire and rehire because he wasn’t ready to leave the force knowing there was a void within the department. We are not sure where the breakdown was but as far as we can tell-Sheriff Jamie Patton never followed through to see that Justice’s paperwork was filed to allow him to stay on. Instead, Justice ran for Sheriff and won the position ousting Patton after 13 years.
Some have said that elections have consequence that come in all forms so with the Sheriff vote being the first and a catastrophic change locally- what will happen in November with the school levies ? Do they make the necessary moves or do things get ugly fast?