Merrimack County Sheriff David Croft was poised to be reelected to another two-year term Wednesday as he held a strong lead over his opponent, Keith Mitchell, by a few thousand votes with almost all towns and city ballots counted.
With 60,000 votes cast, Croft held 51% of the tally compared to 45% for Mitchell with results from four towns remaining. Libertarian candidate Ben Weir captured 4% of the total with 2,186 votes.
“I am not ready to pull the trigger yet and say that I’ve won but I’m feeling pretty good,” Croft said Wednesday. “But anything can still happen.”
Croft gained a third of his votes from Concord residents and beat Mitchell in all 10 city wards.
Mitchell took the lead in more rural, Republican-leaning towns like Hill, Dunbarton and Epsom.
“I went to some of my towns that I thought I was going to have trouble in, some of the smaller, predominantly red towns,” Croft said. “I knew it wouldn’t change much the day of, but I wanted to be there.”
Mitchell could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Croft and Mitchell ran against each other in the 2020 Democratic Primary when they were both employed by the sheriff’s office, but Mitchell lost to Croft by a mere 220 votes, a margin of about 1%.
Shortly after Croft’s appointment, Mitchell was laid off from the sheriff’s department, which led Mitchell to believe that he would be better suited to lead the department than Croft.
Mitchell changed political affiliation and ran as a Republican in order to challenge Croft head-to-head.
During their campaigns, both men shared similar goals and values for the department but Mitchell was biting in his criticism of Croft, saying he mismanaged the department and mishandled sexual harassment complaints.
“When I look in the mirror, I’m proud of my accomplishments,” Croft said.
Despite the tone of the campaign, Croft said he holds no ill will toward Mitchell.
“It’s quite a task, even running as low on the ticket as we were,” Croft said of the election. “I commend anyone that wants to step up and continue with their service to the community. I have no animosity toward him.”
As sheriff, Croft said he was proud of expanding training for staff, increasing education in schools and libraries on the dangers of online predators, creating an internet crime task force to monitor and investigate child exploitation, and working with people facing eviction to connect them to local, state and county resources.
Once re-elected, Croft wants to expand his efforts and create a crisis intervention team to assist community members at the scene of stressful situations, add more staff to the communication department and online investigative team and hire a canine trained for friendly searches and narcotic investigations, he said.
“The drug problem isn’t going away and I’d love to have a dog that can do some narcotics work to slow the progression of illegal substances that are coming into Merrimack County,” Croft said.
But not before he takes a few days off in the mountains.
“Tomorrow, I am going to head north to my camp and have a long weekend before I hit the ground running,” Croft said. “But I am not looking forward to the 1,400 signs I have to go find and pick up. But I’d rather be picking them up as a winner rather than a loser.”