Sgt. Fleener will succeed retiring incumbent Sheriff Jim Stubbs, a Democrat, who has served as sheriff for the last eight years.

Fleener won with 10,421 votes to Walter’s 6,715, earning 60% of the vote.

“I was confident my experience and leadership would get people in our community to believe in me,” Fleener said, thanking voters for their support. “I’m extremely fortunate and proud I received (that support.)”

With 30 years in law enforcement, he said his goal is to not disappoint those who put him in office, using his experience to provide the county with the best service possible.

Walter wished Fleener the best, unsurprised by the results.

“I knew it was going to be a tough race,” he said. “I feel like I gave (the campaign) 150%.”

On the campaign trail, Sgt. Fleener, a 25-year veteran in the Webster County Sheriff’s Office, said top priorities for the department included overcoming barriers to hiring deputies and jailers and strengthening the Webster County Jail and Law Enforcement Center.

“I’d like to see (the Webster County Sheriff’s Office as) that star on the map of Iowa where people want to come work for us,” Fleener said in an October debate with Walter.

That would include more internal efforts focused on boosting morale and making room for promotion, making hiring more efficient and more effectively competing for a limited number of young candidates. A national environment with protests against law enforcement has compounded those hiring challenges.

The jail, built over 30 years ago, has consistently been at or close to full capacity in recent years and currently houses an unusually large number of defendants awaiting trial for murder or attempted murder. With jail populations regularly hovering between 50 and 60 people, a recent COVID-19 outbreak in the jail that left 15 inmates and jailers infected highlighted a long-standing weakness for the department.

In direct contrast to his opponent, Fleener said the sheriff’s role should be more active in advocating for a new facility, saying the crowded jail poses safety issues for staff.

“Yes, it has to be a bond issue, but somebody’s got to lead the fight that this isn’t safe and it’s time to move forward,” he said in an October debate, articulating a vision that he had previously defined as a higher priority in his campaign.

He foreshadowed the possibility, in the distant future, of a regional law enforcement center to resolve jail crowding and the need to send inmates to other smaller county jails at a much higher cost to Webster County.

In contrast to Fleener, Democrat Tony Walter consistently emphasized the need to improve outreach efforts and public relations in a way that would pay dividends to the department in the future. He said outreach efforts could rebuild the general image of law enforcement by offering positive experiences, not just negative ones associated with them.

“I believe in proactive law enforcement,” not only through enforcement but through outreach and training, he said previously. “Community outreach has to be a high priority.”

Walter, who has been with the department for 16 of his 18 years in law enforcement, announced a youth mentorship program in September that would have paired deputies with children in school to create relationships with effects that reverberate in the individual and the community throughout a student’s life.

The matter of a new jail, he said, was an issue that should simply be left to supervisors, and subsequently, voters.

Internally, Walter said that one of the Sheriff’s Office’s greatest needs are for further improvement and updates in training for jailers and deputies that would encompass mental health, deescalation tactics, use of force and substance abuse.

Walter defeated Sgt. Trevir Michehl in June’s Democratic primary before facing off with Fleener, who ran unopposed as a Republican.

In October, Webster County Republicans slightly eclipsed Democratic voter registrations for the first time in many years. Independent voter registrations still outnumber parties in the county.

From Oct. 2016 to Nov. 2020, Democratic registrations declined from 8,071 to 7,725. Republicans gained over 1,000 registrations in the same period, ending Nov. 1 at 7,936.