Incumbent Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood was re-elected to a third term in office on Tuesday, cementing him as the head of the Volusia Sheriff’s Office until his term expires in 2028. Running as an independent candidate, Chitwood handily defeated his singular re-election opponent, Republican James Powers.
"I cannot tell you how humbled I am that over 82 percent of this county has put me back in office, and gave us a vote of confidence as your sheriff and as an organization," Chitwood said. "The next four years are going to be supercharged. My passion and energy is to protect this community, fight for this community, and serve this community to the best of my ability."
With respect to the campaign waged by Powers, the decision by Volusia County voters to re-elect Chitwood was largely expected in the runup to election day. He gained national recognition in 2023 by publicly accosting neo-Nazi demonstrators, leading to the arrest of several men across the country for alleged death threats in response.
Chitwood’s reputation entered a more turbulent period later in 2023, when he publicly slammed the Daytona Beach News-Journal and controversially shunned them from future press conferences. He again attracted controversy more recently this year, when he began the practice of posting the faces and identities of minors accused of threatening Volusia County schools. He took them on ‘perp walks’, in which they’d be filmed as they were walked handcuffed into a jail cell. Neither initiative caused Volusia voters to lose their overall faith in him, as evidenced by Tuesday’s results.
James Powers ran a campaign centered around limiting profits by law enforcement agencies, crackdowns on illegal immigration, and fiscal conservatism. On his campaign website he attempted to sway Republican voters by citing comments from Chitwood which criticized then-President Donald Trump in the aftermath of the January 6th, 2021 insurrection. He pointed to Chitwood’s non-endorsement of Trump in particular. Further down on his webpage, Powers asserted that elected officials should not espouse their political views while in office, a practice which would set him up for a hard pivot from his campaign rhetoric.
