The abandoned effort to draft Andy Parrish for sheriff of Trempealeau County has its first named inside account, from one of its organizers. In an op-ed submitted to the Pioneer, Carla Short describes the plan to put Parrish — the first-term supervisor at the center of the camera fight — on the November ballot as a Libertarian write-in, and its end, in her telling, after Blair Police Chief Kent Johnson, one of three Republicans in the Aug. 11 primary, committed to taking the county’s Flock cameras down.

“Last month getting rid of FLOCK cameras in Trempealeau County seemed impossible,” Short writes. Her group brainstormed. “Then it hit us – Andy Parrish for Sheriff.”

Short is an advocate on this issue, not a bystander. She ran for the County Board this spring from District 17 and lost to the incumbent, Ron Johnson, 204 votes to 165, on April 7. Ron Johnson, the supervisor, is a different man from Kent Johnson, the Blair police chief.

Nothing in her account or the record indicates that Parrish and Johnson ever discussed the write-in, or that Johnson knew of it, and the Pioneer has no evidence the plan and Johnson’s change of position were connected. None of the three Republicans has addressed the episode publicly. Neither has Parrish, who has endorsed Johnson — beyond telling this paper that had he run and won, he would have given up his board seat.

“A group of us did research into write-in candidates,” she writes. “Our best option was to register as a write-in under the Libertarian Party,” needing “200 +/- properly cast ballots.” The idea came before the man: “Then it hit – does Andy Parrish want to be Sheriff of Trempealeau County? Is he being drafted?” Then, she says, “lots of messages, calls and meetings.”

The Pioneer reported the effort Aug. 1: Parrish weighed the campaign, volunteers working with him put the target closer to 500 commitments — pledges do not convert one-for-one into ballots — and he did not file. Whether her group and those volunteers were the same, Short does not say.

What the law required

Short places the brainstorming in July — “last month,” in an op-ed received in August. The ordinary paths were closed: under Wis. Stat. § 8.15, nomination papers were due by 5 p.m. June 1, with at least 200 signatures for county office in a county of 100,000 or fewer (Trempealeau: 30,760 at the 2020 census), and the independent route under § 8.20 closed the same day. A write-in was the only door left.

Wis. Stat. § 8.16 makes whoever draws the most votes in a party’s primary column that party’s nominee, “regardless of whether the person’s name appears on the ballot.” An empty column adds a floor: a candidate on write-ins alone must reach the greater of the 200-signature minimum or 5 percent of what the party’s candidate for governor drew in the county “at the last general election.” The governor’s race is the law’s rough gauge of a party’s local support, and the higher number governs.

Which election that means is unsettled. Read as the last race for governor — November 2022, when the county canvass gave Tim Michels 6,813 votes and Tony Evers 5,281 — the Pioneer’s arithmetic puts the floor at 341 write-ins in the Republican column and 265 in the Democratic. Read literally — November 2024, no governor’s race — 200 governs every column. Either way the Libertarian floor was 200: no Libertarian ran for governor in 2022, and 5 percent of nothing is nothing. That is why the group chose that column.

The first deadline comes before the primary, not after. Under Wis. Stat. § 7.50(2)(em), write-in votes are tallied by name only for a candidate who has filed a campaign registration statement with the county clerk by noon on the Friday beforehand — this year, noon Friday, Aug. 7. The declaration of candidacy comes second, due by 5 p.m. on the third day after the clerk’s notice of nomination. Both the floor and the counting rule turn on whether “the ballot” means a party’s column or the whole primary ballot; this analysis takes the stricter reading of each.

Who can be sheriff

Wisconsin asks little of the candidate. Under Wis. Stat. § 59.20(1), no one may file for or hold a county elective office “who is not an elector of the county” — a citizen, 18 or older, resident 28 days. The constitution adds two bars: sheriffs “may not hold any other partisan office,” and no one convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor violating the public trust may hold office at all, absent a pardon.

No law enforcement training or experience is required. State law sets a preparatory academy of “not less than 600 hours” and forbids employing anyone as a law enforcement officer who has not completed it and been certified — then exempts sheriffs by name. Wis. Stat. § 165.85(4)(a)8: “Sheriffs are not required to satisfy the requirements under subd. 2., 3., or 7. as a condition of tenure or continued employment.” Subdivision 2 is the certification mandate itself.

The one hard requirement arrives after the votes are counted. Within 20 days of official notice of election, a sheriff must file an oath and a bond — “not less than $5,000 nor more than $25,000, with not less than 3 sureties.” The county board fixes the amount; a committee chaired by its chairman approves the bond and the sureties behind it.

He would not have kept his District 2 seat. Parrish told the Pioneer he would have resigned from the County Board had he won.

Wisconsin law might have settled it for him. Wis. Stat. § 59.10(4), titled “Compatibility,” makes county officers ineligible for the board, and a 2013 attorney general opinion held a supervisor’s seat incompatible with service in the sheriff’s department — the board controls that department’s budget, and the sheriff controls its assignments. No authority the Pioneer found applies that reasoning to an elected sheriff, and attorney general opinions are persuasive, not binding.

Nothing in Parrish’s public biography indicates law enforcement experience. All three Republicans on Tuesday’s ballot have spent careers in it. Under Wisconsin law that is a voter’s preference, not a qualification.

The arithmetic

Against the whole county, 200 votes is small. Wisconsin Elections Commission reports put ballots cast in the August primaries of 2018, 2022 and 2024 at 4,710, 5,651 and 5,564 — making 200 roughly one ballot in 24 to one in 28.

Against the column itself, it is enormous. According to the county clerk’s official canvasses, about two Libertarian ballots were cast countywide in August 2022, and one Libertarian vote in August 2024 — a write-in for U.S. Senate. Neil Harmon, whose 2.1 percent for secretary of state in 2022 kept the Libertarians on Wisconsin ballots, drew 257 votes here with his name printed on a November ballot. The plan needed 200 hand-written ones in an August primary.

For scale: in April, 204 votes won the District 17 board seat Short sought.

One voter, one ballot

What a ballot would have cost is the Pioneer’s analysis, not Short’s. Wisconsin’s partisan primary gives each voter every party’s ballot and counts only one. Each of the 200 would have had to take the Libertarian ballot, surrendering any say in the Republican sheriff primary — the contest likely to decide the office. Candidate listings the Pioneer has reviewed show no Democrat filed; the paper has not confirmed that with the clerk. The forfeit was steeper this year, with Gov. Evers not seeking a third term and contested governor’s primaries in both major parties on the same ballot. The Libertarian column offered nothing back: no one filed for governor there either.

Once Johnson pledged removal, the write-in and his campaign would have competed for the same anti-camera voters — though a live write-in remained the only path to November if Johnson lost. No one involved has said which weighed more.

The reversal

In Short’s telling, Johnson ended it. “After Kent Johnson’s fundraiser in Blair, he decided to change his position on Flock,” she writes. “Kent listened to citizens and did his own research to make this decision.”

That matches this paper’s reporting: in late July, Johnson posted a video to his campaign Facebook page saying the county’s cameras should come down — shut off and covered up. His stated reasons were ownership and harm: he would not run a surveillance system a private corporation controls, and the technology, he said, does harm as well as good. No other outlet has reported the reversal, and the Pioneer has not dated the post.

The three candidates’ positions have been reported separately. Sheriff Erica Koxlien has defended the cameras as a public-safety tool, disabled a data-sharing setting this spring and gave the Law Enforcement Committee an informational session July 8. Chief Deputy Wayne Dahl — a 26-year veteran of the office, its Flock administrator, endorsed by three retired sheriffs — has not stated a position publicly. Neither answered the Pioneer’s renewal questions by deadline, and the July 30 forum’s livestream records no camera question.

The change, Short writes in closing, “frees up time for Andy Parrish to do his work to protect our constitutional rights.”

What the next sheriff inherits

Three county-owned cameras on Highways 93, 35 and 53 photograph the plate, color, make and model of passing vehicles under an agreement then-Sheriff Brett Semingson signed Nov. 15, 2024 — $11,650 the first year, $20,650 over the term. That term runs to April 8, 2027, renewing automatically unless either side gives notice by about March 9; the winner takes office Jan. 4. Whether the renewal call is the sheriff’s alone is contested — “it’s all about the sheriff,” Board Chair Andy Todd told WXOW in July; Parrish argues it is the board’s.

The primary is Tuesday. If no one else reaches the November ballot, it will effectively choose the sheriff — and the cameras’ future. Parrish’s name will not be printed in any column.

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