WHITEHALL — Sheriff Erica Koxlien won the Republican nomination for a full term Tuesday night, the Pioneer projects, taking 45.5 percent of the vote in a three-way primary over Chief Deputy Wayne Dahl and Blair Police Chief Kent Johnson — a result that, with no Democrat, independent or third-party candidate having filed for sheriff, would effectively decide the office barring a write-in campaign this fall.
With 22 of 24 precincts reporting, unofficial returns gave Koxlien 1,568 votes to 1,142 for Dahl and 735 for Johnson. The 426-vote margin is beyond the reach of the two towns still counting, Sumner and Ettrick: Dahl’s best showing of the night — the village of Trempealeau, which he carried 193 to 79 — netted him 114 votes on Koxlien, and erasing the deficit would take an average net of 213 from each of the two, nearly double what any municipality gave him Tuesday.
Koxlien carried 14 of the 21 towns, villages and cities counted, none more decisively than Osseo, where she took 217 of the city’s 277 sheriff votes. She also topped the field in Whitehall, Hale, both Arcadias and nine more communities. Dahl won Gale, Galesville, Eleva, Chimney Rock and the village of Trempealeau. Johnson’s two wins came in Preston and in Blair, the city he polices, where he drew 109 votes to Koxlien’s 55 and Dahl’s 19.
Appointed in December by Gov. Tony Evers when Brett Semingson retired, Koxlien has now won the nomination in her own right — over the chief deputy Semingson endorsed. The primary was fought in part over the county’s three Flock license-plate cameras: Johnson had pledged to take them down, and Koxlien, who narrowed outside access to the system this spring, keeps the contract’s renew-or-cancel decision on her watch, with a full four-year term that would begin in January.
In the Republican primary for clerk of court, the Pioneer projects, Jessica Schue defeated Leni Nilsestuen 1,788 to 1,243 — 58.9 percent to 40.9 — and advances to the Nov. 3 general election against Democrat Mary Teresa Foss. Schue carried 20 of the 21 reporting municipalities. Nilsestuen’s lone win was Galesville, 114 to 96, and the night’s closest count came in Osseo, where Schue edged her by a single vote, 116 to 115.