Oxford County Sheriff Christopher Wainwright, a Republican whom Gov. Janet Mills declined to remove from office two years ago, lost his bid for re-election by 68 votes in Tuesday’s election.
A recount is likely in the race that looks set to usher in Democrat Timothy Holland, a school resource officer and 45-year police veteran, as sheriff. He won 33.9% of votes to 33.7% for Wainwright and 29.5% for independent Justin Brown, who is among three deputies making a civil rights complaint against Wainwright alleging illegal retaliation.
Neither Holland nor Wainwright could be reached on Thursday after the secretary of state’s office reported the result to Bangor Daily News. The day began with the race appearing to go the other way. Holland posted on Facebook in the morning that he trailed Wainwright by 12 votes by the candidates’ own count, saying he would ask for a recount.
But Holland won despite the three-way split that both challengers had worried would hand Wainwright a third term. The race was voters’ first chance to weigh in on Wainwright since 2024, when he survived Maine’s most serious attempt to remove a sheriff in nearly a century.
In 2022, Wainwright pressured a deputy to dismiss a traffic ticket for a woman he had grown up with, then berated the deputies who reported it in a recorded phone call. The next year, the BDN found he had sent uncertified officers into schools and traded guns from evidence to a gun shop for credit with almost no paperwork.
A county investigator concluded Wainwright may have committed theft, though he was never charged. The all-Republican county commission unanimously asked Mills to remove him in February 2024. She called his conduct unprofessional but said it didn’t meet the constitutional standard for removal, saying voters should decide his fate.
Wainwright, of Dixfield, joined the sheriff’s office at 19 and has spent 36 years there. He rose to the top after his role in an FBI investigation into then-Sheriff Wayne Gallant, who was accused of sexually harassing several people and resigned in 2017. Wainwright won the open seat the next year.
He and Brown criticized each other frequently during the campaign, with Wainwright accusing his deputy of running a negative race and pointing to Brown’s role in a police shooting. But the sheriff and Holland were friendlier, with Wainwright saying early Thursday that he respected his Democratic opponent.
Conservative Oxford County was a bright spot for Democrats in this year’s election. In the closest election of its kind, Beth Bosworth of Fryeburg won an open seat over former Rep. John Andrews, R-Paris. Party candidates also flipped three House seats based in Norway, Fryeburg and Bridgton.
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.