Sheriff's race is turning feisty
By Owen S. Good, Rocky Mountain News
July 31, 2002
BOULDER - For Joe Pelle, showing up should have been enough to win
the Democratic primary for Boulder County sheriff.
The career cop and commander of detectives for the Boulder police
carries all the prized endorsements.
He faces a retired deputy sergeant who ended a 24-year career as an
outsider in her own department and barely made the ballot.
Yet Pelle finds himself dogged by charges more suited to a
bare-knuckled Statehouse race: that he's a party-jumping former
Republican and a flip-flopper on issues.
Even his refusal to say where he stands on abortion has become an
issue.
That's the work of Wanda Sterner of Longmont. The 62-year-old is
compensating for a lack of support with a reservoir of nerve - and doing
her best to put a shoo-in favorite on the defensive.
Pelle, 43, of Niwot, is reluctant to discuss his opponent and politicize what
most voters prefer to view as a nonpartisan office.
"I'm not coming to this job with an agenda other than to provide
effective public safety," Pelle said at a July 22 forum.
That has left Sterner to set most of the campaign's agenda, pointedly
bringing up her position on abortion - she's pro-choice - and her
opposition to state laws that override local gun control.
Until three years ago, Pelle had been a registered Republican because,
he said, his father was one. Then he switched parties to help with Mary
Keenan's successful campaign for district attorney.
Sterner paints herself as the true Democrat.
"If you believe something, stick with what you believe. Don't flip-flop
because it's the popular thing to do," she said.
Sterner left the Sheriff's Department in 1999, saying she was unable to
get support in her role as sergeant for community services.
She agreed she was less than popular.
"We call them 'jackets' " Sterner said of the label for "outsider." "Once
you get a jacket, you don't get rid of it."
Pelle has strong ties within the criminal-justice community, reflected in
endorsements from Keenan and Sheriff George Epp, who is being forced
out of office by term limits.
"Since (Pelle's) been in charge of detectives, he's been responsible for a
significant increase in morale and esprit de corps in that unit, which had
really suffered in the wake of the (JonBenet) Ramsey case," Epp said.
The high-profile case is perhaps the only Boulder controversy not to
make it into this campaign.
Printer-friendly copy
