As Phil Berger Fights for Re-election, Sam Page Deflects Questions About His Record

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Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page hunched over a lectern too small for his imposing frame, rarely looking up as he read hurriedly from prepared remarks. He tripped over words, and his voice was flat. But his bitterness was palpable. 

“I come before you tonight to express my concerns for some of the board’s lack of interest in the well-being and support for my staff and deputies of the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office,” Page told the county’s five commissioners on October 20, 2025. Like Page, all were white men, all Republicans, all conservative. 

Page complained that some commissioners “didn’t have the courtesy to contact me” after his deputies were involved in a shootout. (Several later said they called the deputies directly.) Mostly, Page chafed at what he described as “public attacks and misinformation efforts.” 

He’d read on social media that the county board chair said he’d “fix the mess” Page had made. “The first thought that comes to mind is a saying from Dwayne Johnson, The Rock: You need to know your role, Mr. Chair,” Page said. (“Know your role and shut your mouth!” was Johnson’s catchphrase as a professional wrestler in the late 1990s.)

For most of his 27 years in office, Page hadn’t worried about local officials looking over his shoulder. But recently, and in increasingly blunt terms, commissioners had questioned his management, scrutinized his finances, and criticized jail operations.

In an interview, Page dismissed their complaints as “political theater.” 

The political context cannot be ignored. Page is challenging state Senate leader Phil Berger in the March 3 primary. The sheriff’s chief antagonist on the county board—the commissioner Page told to “know your role”—is Kevin Berger, the Senate leader’s son. 

Sen. Berger, a 13-term incumbent, is the state’s most powerful politician and arguably its most influential Republican since Jesse Helms. But he’s also vulnerable. Many MAGA activists view him skeptically, and he alienated some Christian conservatives in 2023 by backing a Rockingham casino proposal. Page, who built a national brand as a Trump-loving immigration hardliner, has pilloried Berger for pushing the casino.  

That’s when commissioners began challenging him, Page said. “It seems like it’s been regular attacks for two years,” he told The Assembly.

But that doesn’t mean every issue can be brushed aside. 

Since 2021, 12 people have died in Rockingham County’s 232-inmate-capacity detention center, making it one of the state’s deadliest jails, according to an Assembly analysis of N.C. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) records. Those deaths and Page’s alleged lack of transparency about other incidents at the jail led the county’s insurer to drop its liability coverage of the sheriff’s office in 2024. 

“That doesn’t happen without gross negligence,” said Chris Elliott, the county’s risk manager.

A year later, the county discovered that Page had routed more than $20,000 in proceeds from jail vending machines into a bank account he controlled, an apparent violation of state law and potentially a felony. Officials referred the matter to the State Bureau of Investigation, which Page called “lawfare at its finest.” An SBI spokesperson said the investigation is ongoing. 

Elsewhere, these allegations might have foreclosed the sheriff’s Senate ambitions or even prompted calls for his resignation. But in Rockingham County, they appear to have barely dented Page’s popularity. 

With early voting underway, the few available public polls point to a close race in the district, which covers Rockingham and rural parts of Guilford County. A Berger loss would upend the state GOP’s political infrastructure and set off a power scramble. It would also embarrass President Donald Trump, who endorsed the Senate leader in December. 

But the focus on Berger has largely overshadowed both Page and the local rivalry driving what has become the state’s most important political story.

“It’s the Hatfields and McCoys in a very North Carolina political dynamic,” said Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College. “Having two men that just cannot stand each other, and the grudges that have been held in a very hyperlocal dynamic.”

The Border Sheriff

After graduating from Reidsville High School in 1975, Page joined the Air Force, then spent two years as a police officer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Rockingham County’s then-sheriff, Bobby Vernon, hired Page as a deputy in 1981 and eventually promoted him to chief investigator. 

But Page and Vernon fell out. Page resigned in 1992 and worked as a bail bondsman and private investigator. Two years later, he challenged Vernon in the Democratic primary—at the time, the only election that mattered—focusing on increased transparency and crime prevention. Page placed a distant second in the four-way race. 

In 1998, Page tried again, this time as a Republican. He promised to remove “frills” from the jail and attacked Vernon for firing seven deputies the sheriff thought were close to Page during the 1994 campaign.  

Page won in a landslide. He offered the fired deputies their jobs back and then fired 14 other deputies.

On his second day in office, Page unplugged the jail’s television sets. A month later, he banned detainees from smoking and forbade smoking cessation courses and nicotine substitutes. “I quit cold turkey,” he told a reporter. “If I can, they can, too.”

Page painted the jail’s disciplinary cells with garish colors to shame misbehaving inmates. He began wearing military fatigues and carrying an assault rifle. He hired a public information officer, hosted a radio talk show, and frequently appeared on local news. He invited journalists to tour the jail.

“I’ve always tried to be as transparent as I could be and also try to use the media,” Page said. 

Page has excelled at retail politics. He’s gregarious and ubiquitous at community events. He helps seniors cross the street after church and directs traffic at funerals. Spend an hour with him in a Reidsville diner, and you’ll be interrupted a half-dozen times by friends and well-wishers.

Page has been reelected six times without losing a precinct. He’s now Rockingham County’s longest-serving sheriff. 

Page, who turns 69 this month, still looks the part. He’s 6-foot-5 and usually wears boots and a cowboy hat. He carries himself with a military posture and sports a neatly trimmed white mustache. Pictures on social media often show him on horseback.  

As Trump put it, Page is “right out of central casting.” 

Page backed the president from the beginning. He led Sheriffs for Trump in 2016, chaired Trump’s North Carolina campaign committee in 2020, and had embraced his signature issue before Trump even entered politics. 

“It’s the Hatfields and McCoys in a very North Carolina political dynamic.”

Michael Bitzer, political scientist

In 2010, as president of the N.C. Sheriffs’ Association, Page became fixated on illegal immigration. He traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border and declared, “If we fail to secure our borders, every sheriff in America will become a border sheriff. (He’s been repeating that line ever since.) Page’s advocacy elevated his profile in far-right circles and won him allies in Trump’s orbit, including deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and border czar Tom Homan.

Rockingham County has a high rate of drug overdose deaths, according to DHHS data. But SBI reports indicate that it doesn’t have much violent crime, and it isn’t clear whether the county has ever had an outsized problem with criminal migrants. 

Page said that more than 600 undocumented immigrants have come through his jail since 2010. That’s about 40 a year—three or four a month—in a county of 93,000. 

Many were likely arrested for nonviolent offenses. But the sheriff’s office had not fulfilled The Assembly’s public records request for monthly reports on these inmates that would outline their alleged crimes.

The Casino’s Ghost

In May 2023, Page decided that a quarter-century as sheriff was enough. He announced that he was running for lieutenant governor. 

A month later, a company linked to Cordish Gaming Group asked Rockingham County to rezone 192 acres of agricultural land as “highway commercial.” The county’s planning board then voted to allow casinos in highway commercial zones if state lawmakers legalized them.

Throughout 2022 and 2023, Cordish executives donated about $92,000 to Sen. Berger’s and other Republicans’ campaigns. In July 2023, Berger unveiled a proposal to allow commercial casinos in three rural counties, including Rockingham. 

Rockingham commissioners unanimously approved rezoning the property in August 2023, in front of an overflow crowd of more than 800 angry opponents. “The people of Rockingham County want, need, and deserve to be heard on this matter,” Page said at the meeting. “We’ve been left in the dark far too long.” 

The proposal collapsed a month later amid resistance from House Republicans. Though the casino was dead, its specter loomed over Rockingham politics.

Rumors soon swirled that Page would abandon his lieutenant governor campaign and challenge Berger instead. In November 2023, an anonymous group released a poll showing Page up by 30 points over Berger. 

Page passed, saying he’d committed to the lieutenant governor’s race. He placed fifth in the March 2024 GOP primary, though he won Rockingham and Guilford counties. Page’s allies challenged the three commissioners up for reelection that year, taking out one incumbent. Kevin Berger hung on by just three votes. 

Before the casino imbroglio, commissioners had mostly left Page alone. They didn’t press him when a family sued over the fatal shooting of an unarmed man in 2017. (The county settled for $1.2 million.) They accepted his explanations after three jail inmates died by suicide in a single month in 2021. 

But the relationship started showing signs of strain in late 2023. The board rejected Page’s request to use forfeiture funds to purchase a new Kia Sorrento, though it allowed him to buy another vehicle, as well as guns and holsters. Commissioners chided his office for not mentioning it during the budget process that had just ended. 

Page responded three days before the March 2024 primary, telling a church congregation that the commissioners had “defunded” his office.

The Jail

At about 9 a.m. on February 5, 2021, 24-year-old Ashley Eggleston hanged herself with a bedsheet inside the Rockingham County jail. Two more jailhouse suicides followed that month.

Another two Rockingham inmates have died by suicide since then. One was 35-year-old Kyle Kepley, who hanged himself in May 2022. In a lawsuit, Kepley’s family accused the sheriff’s office of “deliberate indifference” to his mental health.

The complaint says the jail’s staff failed to order a suicide watch despite Kepley’s “delusional, psychotic behavior,” and a detention officer allegedly “used excessive force, grabbing and lifting Kepley by the throat and slamming him to the concrete floor.” The night Kepley died, detention officers didn’t observe his cell for more than an hour, though state regulations required at least two rounds in that period, according to the complaint. 

The county settled the lawsuit for $120,000. 

“The people of Rockingham County want, need, and deserve to be heard on this matter. We’ve been left in the dark far too long.” 

Sam Page, Rockingham County sheriff

Of the seven other Rockingham inmate fatalities since 2021, four were drug overdoses, according to county records and media reports, including a 51-year-old man in September 2022 and a 35-year-old man found in distress in his cell a month later at 7:15 a.m.; DHHS records indicate no one had checked on the man since 10 p.m.

In 2023, a 24-year-old woman died of an overdose after collapsing in an observation cell three hours after arriving at the jail. Records indicate that she had drugs concealed inside her body. Last year, two inmates were charged with supplying fentanyl to a 39-year-old inmate who died while being held in a one-person cell. 

The other inmates died from a bleeding ulcer, a heart condition, and a heart condition with pneumonia. 

Page said some deaths are unavoidable, and the county’s fentanyl crisis is a key factor. “Just like a hospital, people get sick, people go to the hospital, and, unfortunately, sometimes they pass,” he said. 

But adjusted for size, deaths occur more often in Rockingham’s jail than in almost any other in North Carolina.  

Mecklenburg County’s jail, the state’s largest, has had 17 deaths since 2021. DHHS lists two as suicides, though several have unknown or undetermined causes. The two jails in Guilford County combined have 16 deaths, including four suicides. Fourteen people have died in Wake County’s jail and public safety center, but only two by suicide. 

Only Jackson County’s 72-inmate-capacity jail has had a higher death rate than Rockingham County, according to The Assembly’s analysis, but records indicate none of its five fatalities was a suicide. 

“We didn’t realize how bad it was until, you know, things really got bad,” said Elliott, Rockingham County’s risk manager. 

In May 2024, the county’s insurance company, Travelers, announced that it would drop the sheriff’s office’s liability coverage. It wasn’t just that so many inmates had died; no one informed the insurer about potential claims. 

Travelers told the county that it had learned from media reports that a sheriff’s office captain had been charged with sexual battery and assault in February 2024. (He was fired and later pleaded guilty to assault charges.) Travelers said it heard from an attorney that Page had fired another detention officer for having sex with an inmate. 

“I noticed there were several events [the county] didn’t know about,” Elliott told Page in a May 17, 2024, email.  He’d also learned about an earlier inmate’s death from the news, according to an email he sent Page’s staff. 

Records show that in July 2024, the county began sending the sheriff’s office a daily email with a yes-or-no question: Have there been any incidents today? At first, the sheriff’s office didn’t respond. In August, Elliott sent a reminder.

Page said his staff had notified county officials by phone, not email. He said that after Travelers dropped its coverage, he changed that policy “so there’s a receipt.”

“Every death case we had, we reported to the state,” Page said. “I do a news release. Why wouldn’t we notify the risk manager?” He added that he doesn’t “recall Travelers communicating with me on ‘if you have an event, this is what we need.’”

The county secured a new liability policy, but it was more expensive. The deductible rose from $10,000 to $200,000 per claim, and annual premiums more than doubled. More affordable insurers “don’t want to come within 10 feet of us right now until [Page’s] administration is done,” Elliott told commissioners last November.

“We didn’t realize how bad it was until, you know, things really got bad.”

Chris Elliott, Rockingham County risk manager

Some commissioners also began looking more closely at the state’s twice-a-year jail inspections, which often found serious deficiencies. An October 2024 inspection found that detention officers didn’t make hourly rounds on time, and the jail’s female population was over capacity. Six months later, the inspection found the same problems. The most recent inspection flagged delayed rounds, unhygienic conditions, and “a distinct odor in the female segregation area.”

Elliott said Page rebuffed the county’s efforts to help, which he attributed to the sheriff’s “cowboy persona.” 

Page said the county had no business interfering with the jail’s operations. “I serve the citizens of Rockingham County. I’m not subordinate to the county commission board, OK?” he said. “Their prime responsibility is just funding our operations.” 

The sheriff said he’s taken steps to address the issues. The jail has added medical staff, and officers are more proactive about screening for illnesses and mental health issues, he said. They’ve had only two deaths since 2023. 

The Rivals

By the time Page announced early last year that he would challenge Berger, the sheriff’s rivalry with the senator’s family had been simmering for decades. It began when Phil Berger Jr. became district attorney in 2006, local insiders told The Assembly. 

“[Page] and Phil Jr. have always hated each other,” said a Rockingham politico who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. “He’s never gotten along with Phil Sr. He’s never liked Kevin.”

Page didn’t endorse Berger Jr.’s campaign for DA, and they sometimes clashed. When Berger Jr. ran for the U.S. House in 2014, Page declined to endorse in the GOP primary—a decision Berger Jr.’s opponent, Mark Walker, wielded like a club. “I think it’s fair to ask why you don’t see law enforcement officials supporting the Rockingham County district attorney,” Walker told the News & Record. 

Walker won the primary and served in Congress until 2021. Along with Page, he later rallied against the casino proposal. He also tried to recruit a primary challenger to Sen. Berger in 2024, as The Assembly previously reported. 

Berger Jr., who was elected to the N.C. Supreme Court in 2020, did not respond to interview requests. 

Berger’s allies on the county board have been on Page “like white on rice,” said Doug Isley, a friend of Page and former school board member. “They complained about everything under the sun.”

Commissioner scrutiny has sometimes bled into the campaign. Last April, Kevin Berger requested Page’s campaign finance records dating to 1998. But the elections board couldn’t find his filings from before 2017. Other candidates’ records were missing, too. 

WBTV reported on the missing records, which Page said was the first he’d heard of it. State Elections Board Executive Director Sam Hayes quickly stated that there was “no evidence or indication” that Page did anything wrong. The SBI confirmed in October that it was investigating, and a spokesperson said earlier this month that the probe is ongoing. 

Commissioners’ inquiries into Page’s travel became fodder for attack ads. In October, a Berger-aligned independent group released an ad called “Shady Sam: Travelin’ Man.” Citing expense reports, the ad claimed that Page had spent $50,000 in taxpayer funds on trips to Phoenix, Washington, D.C., Texas, and the Cherokee casino. 

One of those reports shows that Page billed the county about $2,100 for a trip to Phoenix for the National Sheriffs’ Association’s 2021 conference. Another shows that two years later, Page spent about $1,900 on a trip to McAllen, Texas, for a meeting hosted by the Texas Border Sheriffs’ Coalition.  

Page said these trips are for “official business. You have to go to where the conferences are.” 

He has endorsed challengers to two incumbent commissioners in the 2026 primary. If they win, his supporters will hold a majority. 

The Account

Last March, Rockingham’s new finance manager learned that Page had been depositing proceeds from the jail’s vending machines into a bank account he set up under his name for more than a decade. 

The monthly deposits were usually less than $100, and Page didn’t use the funds to buy anything extravagant: flowers for funerals, and coffee, water, and snacks for meetings, according to bank statements. In 2021, he wrote a check for $53.38 to Shane Bullins, the captain who later pleaded guilty to assaulting a woman. The account was also used to buy Page a $21.40 birthday cake in 2023. 

Records show $10,429 spent from the account since 2014. Kevin Berger said the county is aware of at least $10,000 in prior spending from what he’s described as Page’s “off-the-books” bank account. County officials referred it to the State Bureau of Investigation; a probe is ongoing. 

Page said his predecessor, who died in 2018, had a similar account. “It wasn’t a problem until I decided to run against Phil Berger,” he said.

While questions about the account are inextricably intertwined with the contentious primary, the underlying facts indicate that Page’s account appears to be illegal. 

The Local Government Budget and Fiscal Control Act states that all money a government entity receives “on account of operation of vending facilities shall be deposited, budgeted, appropriated, and expended” as part of the local government’s annual budget. Except in specific circumstances, proceeds must be deposited “with the finance officer or in an official depository” daily. 

Sheriffs aren’t exempt. “[I]t applies to all revenues, including donations, grants, and even vending machine proceeds,” wrote University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Government professor Kara Millonzi in 2012.

Another state law prohibits local government officials from depositing public money into or spending money from accounts without board approval.

The N.C. Sheriffs’ Association’s 2024 Finance Reference Manual makes it plain: “Vending fund revenue is treated as general fund revenue unless you receive approval from the board of county commissioners to handle it differently.”

Rockingham County Manager Lance Metzler said there is no record that the board ever voted to allow Page to open an account or divert vending machine proceeds. 

“The money was never part of a budget and was not audited,” Kevin Berger said in an email. “Every penny collected and spent violated the law.”

Page said he received a memo from the county’s finance office in 2011 that he believed authorized him to use the account. But the sheriff’s office declined to provide the memo, citing the SBI investigation. 

County Attorney Clyde Albright pointed to a law that says criminal investigation records are not public records, though the same law states that “the use of a public record in connection with a criminal investigation … shall not affect its status as a public record.”

Albright declined to comment further. Metzler said the memo does not exist. 

“I do not possess such a document and have checked with [the finance department] to review files, and they do not have a memorandum that you are referencing,” he wrote in an email.

The End Game

On December 10, Page was eating dinner at a local restaurant when he received a call from the White House. “The president needs to talk to you,” he was told. Trump said he was endorsing Berger. 

“The president, I will just say, he is fun, but he is a businessman and wants to get things done,” Page said. “He told me about Phil and getting the [U.S.] House seats.” 

Two months earlier, legislative Republicans had called a special session to redraw the state’s congressional map to give Republicans an advantage in the 1st District, currently represented by Democrat Don Davis. At the time, Berger denied rumors that he’d exchanged the gerrymander for Trump’s endorsement.

“The money was never part of a budget and was not audited. Every penny collected and spent violated the law.”

Kevin Berger, Rockingham County commissioner

A Berger campaign spokesperson declined to comment for this article. 

That night, Trump posted on Truth Social that Berger “is an America First Patriot, who is doing an incredible job.” Page “is GREAT,” he added, and offered him an unspecified job in the administration. Page declined. 

Trump had occasionally endorsed in legislative primaries but never in North Carolina. That he felt the need to intervene spoke volumes about Berger’s precarity. 

In his 15 years as Senate leader, Berger has slashed taxes and regulations while the state’s economy grew. Though he remained friendly with Trump, he often seemed more at home with fiscal conservatives than with MAGA populists. (After Trump lost in 2020, Berger told The Assembly that he’d tried to support him without being labeled a “full-throated Trump loyalist.”) The casino proposal and a recent attempt to ban shrimp trawling further strained his relationship with the base.   

Berger has a massive financial advantage. His campaign and political action committee raised nearly $3 million in 2025, according to campaign finance records. An independent group behind a series of anti-Page ads raised an additional $2.8 million. 

Page has raised about $45,000. At least three “issue-advocacy” groups are supporting Page, though they don’t have to report their fundraising. Still, they’re likely to spend far less than their pro-Berger counterparts.

The SBI investigations and concerns about the jail appear to have done little damage to the sheriff’s brand in Rockingham County. Neither has a barrage of mailers and television ads. By March 3, Berger’s camp will have spent millions attacking Page as corrupt and incompetent. 

But the ads, as Republican pollster Rick Shaftan said on X, aren’t “drawing blood. … Rockingham people think Page is a good sheriff.”

Berger is expected to win the Guilford part of the district, which has more voters. Page will need to run up the score in his home county to win.

If Page prevails, he’ll leave the kingdom he’s ruled since 1998 next year to become a backbench legislator. Page hasn’t said much about what he wants to do in the Senate. His goal is to get there.  

Asked whether it’s more important to be a senator or to defeat Phil Berger, Page didn’t hesitate. 

“It’s more important to do what’s good for the people in the district,” he said, “and what’s good for the state of North Carolina, which is to provide an opportunity for senators to be able to do what they were hired to do, which is to represent us instead of representing one man.”