I really don’t want to write about whatever it is Neil Kester, the Republican nominee for sheriff in Augusta County, is trying to sell now.
It just feels, as everything from that side of the 2019 sheriff’s campaign has felt to this point … just dirty.
Kester held another presser on Monday, to raise issues with the failed accreditation of the sheriff’s office, under Sheriff Donald Smith, his opponent, and employee turnover in the office, which he claimed is at 60 percent in the nearly four years since Smith took office.
Both would be fair points to raise, as it would be fair to report Smith’s responses, that the failed accreditation is due to a single item from a 2016 murder investigation that has not been returned by an investigator who checked it out, that more than a third of those who have left their jobs with the sheriff’s office in the past four years did so just before or just after Smith took office in 2016.
Whatever, those are semantics, fair game to bring up, debate, in the end not likely to be reasons to vote for or against either candidate, but definitely worth getting out there for the purposes of discussion, for folks to be able to think through for themselves.
But the bigger issue is, again, just how dirty this whole thing feels right now.
Kester, according to a report in today’s News Leader, denounced the radio and billboard ads targeting Smith that have been the talk of the county the past few weeks, which, fine, good, great, because he should be distancing himself from them.
That the ads have been linked to a former Kester campaign volunteer and local Republican operative who has contributed more than $3,000 to the Kester campaign might just make the denouncement ring hollow, though.
And then there’s the part where a top employee from a local company that has had a long-running beef with various county officials, including Smith, appears to also be involved in the ads.
A final and then: the sitting Staunton sheriff is also backing Kester, to the tune of two campaign donations totaling $580, according to reports on file with the State Board of Elections.
You could easily look at this as if there is some sort of effort ongoing – involving the local Republican Party, a well-known local business and a sitting local official from a neighboring jurisdiction – to oust the current sheriff.
The question you have to ask, then, is: are these just about the strangest political bedfellows you’ve ever seen in one place, or is there something more going on here than meets the eye?
Column by Chris Graham
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