Unaffiliated Candidates Oust ‘Unbeatable’ Sheriffs

As the sun began to set on Election Day, Alamance County’s longtime Republican Sheriff Terry Johnson bantered with his challenger, unaffiliated candidate Shannon Long, in the parking lot outside the Graham Recreation Center.

“The thing is,” Johnson said, turning to a reporter, “we get along.”

Johnson, a native son and former State Bureau of Investigation agent, had been the area’s most popular politician for decades. 

Over 24 years as sheriff of the agrarian-turned-suburban county between Durham and Greensboro, he gained admirers with promises to root out Mexican drug cartels, help deport people without legal immigration status, and protect the marble statue of a Confederate soldier that sits on a pillar in the heart of Graham, the county seat. 

His detractors, including many Black and Latino residents, considered Johnson the embodiment of a local power structure stacked against people of color—they called the place he seemed to dominate “No Chance Alamance.” 

But on Election Day, Johnson, 76, emphasized common ground. “We agree on 90%,” he said, looking at Long, a Black pastor, barber, and entrepreneur who previously worked for the sheriff’s office in neighboring Orange County. Johnson cited issues like the need for better options for people with mental illnesses. 

Long, 46, nodded solemnly. “The sheriff has a lot of history,” said Long, who was endorsed by the Democratic Party. “I’ve got to glean from it.”

Now he will have to. Long overcame the long odds of running as an unaffiliated candidate against a man most thought impossible to beat, winning by more than 3,300 votes. 

That wasn’t the only upset. Voters appear to have ousted two other entrenched Republican sheriffs in rural North Carolina: Jim McVicker, who had led the Bladen County Sheriff’s Office since 2014, and Jason “Skeet” Wilborn, who was elected to lead the Person County Sheriff’s Office in 2022. 

In Bladen, Ray Marlowe also ran unaffiliated, using a slogan identical to Long’s: “People Over Politics.” 

Should election officials confirm the results, North Carolina will have five unaffiliated sheriffs, including Anson County Sheriff Scott Howell, who was appointed in 2022, and Martin County Sheriff Drew Robinson, who was appointed last year. Unaffiliated candidate Major Shively beat the Republican candidate with 63% of the vote in Tyrrell County in a race for an open seat.

“The one thing we thought we knew is that unaffiliated candidates don’t get on the ballot, and when they do, they don’t win,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. An unaffiliated candidate for state House also won, he noted. 

Historically, unaffiliated candidates for sheriff have fared a bit better, likely because people tend to find a highly partisan version of justice off-putting. “If you’re going to break through,” he said, “sheriff is a good place to do it.”

‘Sheriff for the People’

Marlowe said he ran unaffiliated because he wanted to be “a sheriff for the people.” “I can’t do that if I’m one party or the other,” he concluded.

McVicker, the Republican incumbent in Bladen County, campaigned as the experienced choice, with more than 50 years in law enforcement, nearly a dozen as the county’s top cop.

But McVicker has faced skepticism from the county’s Black population from the beginning. In 2014, the year he was first elected, the county made national headlines as the possible site of the first lynching of a Black man in decades. The FBI later concluded that 17-year-old Lennon Lacy, who was found hanging from a swing set, died by suicide.

McVicker won his first race by a narrow margin—only 349 votes—amid allegations of absentee ballot tampering. The consultant he hired to help with his absentee ballot operation was later at the center of a vote-harvesting scandal that led to a rare do-over congressional election. 

McVicker handily won reelection in 2018 over a Black Democratic challenger. He beat the same man by a similar margin—about 1,300 votes—four years later.

This year, McVicker faced two challengers, Democrat Chris Hunt, and Marlowe, who won the endorsement of the Bladen County Improvement Association, a political action committee that advocates for the interests of Black people. 

“I would say the backing from them helped me tremendously,” said Marlowe, a former sheriff’s office investigator who left when McVicker was first elected because, he said, he didn’t think they would mesh.

While stumping for the top job, Marlowe promised to put more deputies on street patrol and in schools and to be “a sheriff, not a full-time politician.”

The campaign’s traction caught the local GOP by surprise. “McVicker clearly had the greater depth of experience both within law enforcement and administratively,” said Wayne Schaeffer, chair of the Bladen County Republican Party, “so we kind of felt it was pretty much an open-and-shut case.”

He praised McVicker’s performance and attributed the loss to hurt feelings. “These southeastern counties are a conduit for drugs north to south, and McVicker was very aggressive about paying attention to that,” Schaeffer said. “There was a few people he rubbed the wrong way, bruised their feelings a little bit—oh boohoo, too bad. But we didn’t hire him to be the county sweetheart.”

McVicker didn’t respond to an interview request from The Assembly but told the Wilmington television station WWAY that he wasn’t actually surprised by the outcome. 

“This was a very dirty election on their side, and I’m glad it’s over,” he said. Neither the Democratic Party nor the Bladen County Improvement Association responded to The Assembly’s interview requests.

Marlowe said his takeaway was that “nobody’s untouchable.” 

“If you’re not doing the best thing you can for the citizens of your county,” he said, “it’ll show up eventually.” 

‘There Will Never Be a Black Sheriff’

In Person County, Dennis Allen believed he had no chance of winning.

He had been told as much repeatedly. “There will never be a Black sheriff in Person County,” Allen recalled sheriff’s office administrators telling him time and again over his three decades as a deputy. 

But it irked Allen, who retired as a lieutenant in 2024, that Wilborn might coast to reelection without a challenge. He started considering a run, then the Democratic Party recruited him. “I felt like that was my calling from God,” he said.

“In the beginning, I wasn’t doing it to win,” Allen said. “I just wanted him to earn it. I wanted him to work hard to earn something. But then I got to the place where I said, ‘Man, I done put in all this work. Maybe I should win.’”

With messaging and social media help from Sarah Bradshaw, a marketing specialist who also serves as the local Democratic Party secretary, Allen’s campaign found purchase in a county that, like Alamance, is transitioning from agrarian to more suburban. Many residents work in Burlington or Durham. 

Allen found that some Republicans were willing to pledge their support, at least privately, after he answered their questions on the issues they held dear, including immigration enforcement and Flock cameras. 

Preliminary results show Allen winning by almost 1,500 votes—a 9-point margin.

He will join a growing number of Black sheriffs in the piedmont counties bordering Virginia. Tony Durden Jr. has been sheriff of Caswell County since 2017, Curtis Brame has led the sheriff’s office in Vance County since 2018, and Robert Fountain was first elected in Granville County in 2022. 

Allen said they all have talked on the phone about “how it has never been this way.” Four years ago, the last Black candidate for sheriff of Person County heard gunfire at home one night with his family. In the morning, he noticed bullet holes in a campaign sign in his front yard.

Wilborn hasn’t publicly acknowledged Allen’s win, but he called to congratulate him, Allen said: “I was shocked.” Wilborn’s supporters, however, appear less willing to concede. There are efforts on Facebook to organize a protest at Allen’s swearing-in ceremony.

$400,000 and Around-the-Clock Security

When Long first entertained a run against Johnson four years ago, a Mebane City Council member told him that he needed at least $400,000 and around-the-clock private security because “the level of racism is high.”

Long initially thought the claims were “humorous,” but his opinion later changed. He said he had been racially profiled and played a half-joking game of “which county is more racist”—Alamance or Person—with Allen. He never raised that huge sum or hired 24-hour security, but ran anyway.

Dejuana Bigelow, a Burlington City Council member who got her political start amid the Black Lives Matter protests in Graham in 2020, said she saw Long’s promise immediately. 

“I could tell that he was very intentional in running for sheriff of Alamance County, and I also knew that it was going to be a very strategic race,” she said. Long’s choice to run unaffiliated “hushed some people that were saying, ‘I’m not going to vote for a Democrat.’” Bigelow helped him gather the 5,000 signatures he needed to get on the ballot.

“The man was everywhere,” said Ricky Hurtado, a former state House member from Alamance. 

“He was talking to voters, registering people, getting signatures to get on the ballot in like the drive-through of Whataburger—it was crazy,” Hurtado said. “Sometimes candidates step in as a sacrificial lamb, but Shannon ran to win this thing.”

His energy inspired residents who had watched challenges to the local establishment fail repeatedly, said Dreama Caldwell, executive co-director of Down Home North Carolina, a progressive political organization that focuses on rural areas. 

Some also noticed Johnson’s Republican base fracturing. Earlier this year, he faced a primary challenger who gathered endorsements from dozens of local law enforcement officers.

On Election Day, Thomas May, a devoted Johnson supporter and frequent counterprotester at the 2020 demonstrations in Graham, still thought there was no chance Long would win. He later told a reporter he went to the gun range the next day: “Never know when it might come in handy.” 

In the end, voters seem to have determined that Johnson has had more than enough time to solve the problems he identified, Long said: “Why is it that we haven’t dealt with the cartel, the drugs, the mental health issues? Some of the things that he was mentioning, he’s had 24 years to mention.”

Johnson attributed his loss not to local dynamics, but rather to a national blue wave. 

“I wish Mr. Long a great time as sheriff and hope that he will keep the people in mind and not his pocket or the prestige,” Johnson said. “Because, to be honest, there’s no prestige in being sheriff. It’s headaches.”