Home Appointments Sheriff
Sheriff
Hettinger County Sheriff's Office, North Dakota
| Appointee | Sarah Warner |
|---|---|
| Role | Sheriff |
| Organisation | Hettinger County Sheriff's Office, North Dakota |
| Domain | Law Enforcement |
| Start | 3 November 2010 |
| End | Currently in role |
| Notes | First woman to win a modern competitive election for sheriff in North Dakota (appointed earlier in 2010 |
Sarah Warner was elected sheriff of Hettinger County, North Dakota on 3 November 2010 and is the first woman to win a modern competitive election for sheriff in the State of North Dakota. She was appointed sheriff earlier in 2010 to fill a vacancy and then ran in the November general election on her own record. As of press coverage in the mid-2020s she is described as the longest-serving female sheriff in North Dakota, with fifteen-plus years in the office.
The pre-Warner North Dakota record
The earlier ND first-woman sheriff record contains Maggie Hale of Bowman County (1947–1949), described in local press as "the first and only female Sheriff of Bowman County" and "possibly the first female sheriff in the state." Hale and her husband were both Bowman County sheriffs — an explicit husband-and-wife rotation consistent with term-limit-workaround patterns documented elsewhere in this domain (Wisconsin, Alabama, Kansas, Tennessee, Texas, South Dakota). The dataset records Hale as historical context within this dossier rather than as a separate first-woman entry.
Warner's 2010 race is the earliest documented event in which a North Dakota county electorate selected a woman for the office in a competitive context rather than through a family-rotation arrangement. The partial verification badge reflects the appointment-then-election pathway and the brevity of contemporary press detail on the November 2010 contest's margins.
Background and tenure
Warner came to law enforcement from a stay-at-home-mother background, becoming a Hettinger County deputy before her 2010 appointment to the office and subsequent election. Hettinger County is a small rural North Dakota jurisdiction in the southwest of the state.
The next ND first-woman event in the dataset's tracker is the Griggs County Amberly Michaelis — Danielle Bjorlie sheriff/chief-deputy duo, recorded by InForum as "the first female sheriff and chief deputy duo in North Dakota."
Sources
- The Dickinson Press — Hettinger County Sheriff Sarah Warner talks past, future
- The Dickinson Press — From stay-at-home mom to sheriff
- Bowman County Pioneer — Maggie Hale First Woman Elected Sheriff in North Dakota (Hale context)
- KFYR-TV — Bowman couple were both county sheriff (Hale husband-wife context)
