With a primary runoff win on Tuesday night, Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown will keep her job.
Brown faced her predecessor in the runoff, former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez. Valdez recommended Brown for the job when she left the office to run for governor in 2018 but said she decided to run for sheriff against her former colleague after claiming morale in the department had plummeted and that she was urged to run by deputies.
Brown countered in her reelection campaign, arguing she'd spent more time serving underserved parts of the county that had been ignored under her predecessor.
The sheriff oversees more than two thousand employees in the county and runs the Dallas County Jail. Valdez had also been critical of how the jail was run following a series of failed inspections after a decade of passing grades.
Get top local stories in DFW delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC DFW's News Headlines newsletter.
Still, voters sided with Brown who handily defeated Valdez by nearly 40 points Tuesday, securing 68.61% of the vote to Valdez's 31.39%. With no Republican challenger on the ballot in November, the primary win means Brown will win in November unopposed.
Valdez issued a statement late Tuesday, saying the race was more than about the candidates.
"This race was never about us, this race was about highlighting the many problems at the Dallas County Sheriff Department and bring light to a failing department. Our campaign was honored to be able to bring attention to the many issues affecting deputies; morale and the safety of our inmates and the citizens of Dallas County. Our hope is that our campaign brought light to these issues and that they will lead to an improved Sheriff's department," Valdez's campaign said.
Voter turnout for runoffs is historically low. Dallas County Elections reported that the turnout on Tuesday was 2.14%, meaning roughly 31,000 of the county's 1.4 million registered voters decided on this election.
