Dyer believes she won because voters supported her “idea that we can have more forward-thinking, progressive law enforcement. … The message that seemed the most powerful across the county was our message on traffic stops and our message on mental health involving law enforcement.” | Photo by J. Adrian Wylie
Despite little sleep and no coffee, Dyer was “very excited” the morning after the election. “It took until late that night for the county clerk to determine the winner,” she says, and when she finally learned she’d won, it “was just such a relief!”
Dyer believes she won because voters supported her “idea that we can have more forward-thinking, progressive law enforcement. … The message that seemed the most powerful across the county was our message on traffic stops and our message on mental health involving law enforcement.”
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In a later email, she explains that she aims to build on Ann Arbor’s recent changes, led by city councilmember Cynthia Harrison, to “create a policy to stop unnecessary minor traffic stops which exacerbate racial disparities. Regarding mental health and wellness of staff this is something I talked frequently about and is a crisis in law enforcement as a whole that needs to be prioritized more. As sheriff I will be laying the foundation to create a trauma informed workplace environment.”
Dyer writes that she campaigned in “a lot of the rural areas, did a lot of one-on-ones, and asked them what they wanted to see from the Sheriff’s office, how they were feeling about the Sheriff’s office.” She says many responded that they felt ignored. “Fraud and scams were issues brought up of concern as well.”
She won most of the rural precincts, and that may have made the difference: In the end, former deputy Dyer got 26,841 votes or 44 percent of the total, while the sheriff’s office director of community engagement, Derrick Jackson, got 26,443 or 43 percent. Former DEA agent Ken Magee had the remaining 8,308 or 13 percent.
By email, Dyer credits her win in part to using “digital platforms in ways that really gave us an advantage. … We knew we couldn’t outspend on mail so we prioritized diversifying our spends to reach people on different platforms. We took some risks, being we didn’t follow the traditional structure of political campaigns, and the risks paid off.”
She also had more money to spend because “my manager was a volunteer [and there were] a lot of people that did a lot of hard work on the campaign that weren’t paid.” Beyond manager Will Garcia, she emails, they were too numerous to name, but many “were were impacted by our legal system or embedded in community organizing which meant we were all doing this because we believed in the issues we were running on. When you run a grassroots campaign the level of dedication in my opinion is unmatched because we were bringing people onto the team that cared about the community.”
“Derrick’s campaign had lots and lots of mailers and things like that and Alyshia’s campaign not as much,” observes Larry Kestenbaum, the twenty-year veteran county clerk who won his own primary in August. “She had a lot of social media stuff going on.”
The clerk adds that Dyer “was perceived, and perhaps accurately, as being to the left of Derrick. And so I think that was to her advantage in the race.” He thinks her gender also helped: After the pro-forma general election—she’s unopposed in November—Dyer will be Washtenaw’s first female sheriff.
What difference did Ken Magee’s presence make? “That is really hard to say,” Dyer replies. “It probably was helpful [to the campaign] from the point of just having two men on the ballot.”
Magee emails that he lost because Dyer and Jackson “raised nearly half a million dollars collectively” while his campaign took in only “$25,000, made up of primarily small-dollar donations.” He thinks it didn’t help that he was “perceived as the ‘old school law enforcement guy’ while my opponents were thought of as the modern, social justice warrior candidates.”
This was Magee’s third try for the office, and his worst showing. But he still believes he made a difference.
“I think without a shadow of a doubt, my participation in this election had a significant impact on the outcome,” he writes. “I am 100% confident that Derrick Jackson would have won the election if I were not in this race.”
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