Dyer and Jackson duke it out in Washtenaw County sheriff’s race

ANN ARBOR, MI — Who could be Washtenaw County’s next sheriff was one of the big questions heading into the primary election Tuesday, Aug. 6.

In the three-way race between Democrats Alyshia Dyer, Derrick Jackson and Ken Magee, Dyer won with 43.5% of the vote, the county’s unofficial results show.

Jackson came in second with 42.9% and Magee had over 13%.

That’s with all 120 precincts fully counted.

Live election results for Tuesday, Aug. 6 primary in Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County

Dyer held onto a lead that narrowed throughout Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning as results were tallied.

The final vote count was 26,806 for Dyer, 26,422 for Jackson and 8,306 for Magee, giving Dyer a 384-vote win.

A color-coded results map shows varying shades of blue and orange as Dyer and Jackson won different parts of the county.

Sheriff's race — Alyshia Dyer narrowly defeated Derrick Jackson in the Washtenaw County sheriff's race in the August 2024 Democratic primary. This map shows areas won by Dyer in orange and by Jackson in blue.Washtenaw County

Sheriff Jerry Clayton announced in 2022 he would not run for reelection and was backing Jackson, the sheriff’s director of community engagement, to replace him. Clayton has served as the county’s sheriff since 2008.

Primary Election Night in Ann Arbor — Sheriff candidate Derrick Jackson during Primary election night in Ann Arbor on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. Josh Boland | MLive.com

Dyer is a social worker and former county sheriff’s deputy, while Magee is a consultant who once led the University of Michigan’s public safety department.

The winner of Tuesday’s Democratic primary is expected to win the seat in the November general election.

There were no Republicans running for sheriff until late July when two write-in candidates emerged. Marc Murawski and Michael Purdy Jr. competed in Tuesday’s primary as write-ins, but votes for them have not been counted and assigned yet. The unofficial results show 1,145 write-in votes yet to be assigned to either candidate.

There can be only one Republican nominee for sheriff on the November ballot, so the two write-ins were competing against each other and also trying to attain the minimum number of votes to be nominated, County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum said.

That is not a small hill to climb, he said, pointing to state guidelines that show for a write-in candidate to secure the party nomination they must net either 5% of the total votes cast in the partisan primary or 0.15% of the total county population as of the last census, whichever is greater.

There were about 14,516 Republican votes in the county, looking at the U.S. Senate race totals, so 5% of that would be 726, and the population number comes in below that, Kestenbaum said, so it’s possible one of the Republican candidates could advance if they got most of the write-in votes.

Independent write-in candidates also have until Oct. 25 to file to compete in November.