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Old friends have become foes in this year's race for the Caroline County sheriff's seat.
Virginia State Police 1st Sgt. Tony Lippa this week announced plans to unseat longtime Sheriff Homer Johnson in a campaign that is already heating up, five months before the Nov. 4 general election.
"I'm going to stand for loyalty, integrity, pride, professionalism and accountability," said Lippa, a 24-year veteran of the state police. "I think the citizens of this county deserve that."
Lippa, 49, said he wants to see Caroline sheriff's deputies taking advantage of the same training and education as the troopers he supervises at the state police field office in Bowling Green.
"They need to be a step above the crime and the criminals," Lippa said. "The more education they can have, the better they will be."
Johnson, a lifelong Caroline resident who has been sheriff 12 years, said his record speaks for itself. He said he has known Lippa for years and doesn't like the idea of running against an old friend.
"I don't know what Tony's talking about, I've never been arrested," Johnson said. "We give people fair and honest law enforcement."
Lippa joined the state police in 1978 after three years with the Henrico County police. He spent most of his career with the state police in Caroline, where he lives with his wife, Donna, 14-year-old daughter, Ashley, and 11-year-old son, Anthony.
"The people here have been so great to me for so many years," said Lippa, who is running as an independent.
Johnson, a 59-year-old Democrat, became sheriff after 20 years as a Caroline deputy. He said he's helped bring the Sheriff's Office into the 21st century. He supervises a staff of 46 deputies, dispatchers and support employees.
Over the last decade, Johnson has added resource officers at each of the county's high schools, joined the nationwide Amber Alert missing-children program, stepped up neighborhood watches, joined the regional drug-enforcement task force and completely computerized the department.
He lives in Caroline with his wife, Cheryl, and 17-year-old daughter, April, a rising senior at Caroline High School.
The showdown between Lippa and Johnson will be one of only a handful of competitive races for sheriff in the Fredericksburg region this year. In Spotsylvania, Stafford and King George counties, the candidates face no opposition.
Spotsylvania sheriff's Maj. Howard Smith, an independent, will be the first sheriff's candidate to run unopposed since the early 1950s. The 44-year-old Smith has worked in law enforcement for 24 years--at the Fredericksburg Sheriff's Office, Fredericksburg police and the Spotsylvania Sheriff's Office.
He led the department's Lisk-Silva Task Force in the late 1990s and headed up the county's sniper attack investigation last October.
Smith said he's flattered and humbled that he drew no challenger.
"I think the men and women of this department are the main reason this is an uncontested sheriff's race," he said. "They've refused to give up and gave their all on two of the biggest investigations in this area's history."
In Stafford, Sheriff Charles Jett did not draw a challenger in his bid for a second four-year term.
Jett, 44, has been with the Sheriff's Office for 25 years, moving his way up through the ranks. The Republican lives in southern Stafford with his wife and two young sons.
King George Sheriff Clarence Dobson is also running unopposed. In Westmoreland County, incumbent Sheriff C.W. 'Buddy' Jackson is being challenged by Alfred M. Yeatman Jr. Orange County Sheriff Charles Feldman will face Jack Davis, and Culpeper County Sheriff Lee Hart has drawn opposition from Culpeper police Lt. Ricky Pinksaw.
In Richmond County in the Northern Neck, two candidates are running to replace Gene Sydnor, who has retired after 11 years as sheriff and several appearances in court as a defendant.
Sydnor prevailed in a federal lawsuit stemming from a 1997 parade in Warsaw, where he sidelined a high school band that he thought was marching too slowly. Last year, Sydnor was convicted of assaulting an employee of the Richmond County commonwealth's attorney, but a circuit court jury found Sydnor innocent on appeal.
Earlier this year, a disc jockey filed a $700,000 federal lawsuit against Sydnor, claiming the sheriff falsely imprisoned him at a Warsaw nightspot. A trial is set for Sept. 2.
Two of his former deputies are seeking the sheriff's badge:
Douglas Bryant, 47, served as a Richmond County deputy from 1977 to 2001. Bryant is now a sergeant in the Northumberland County Sheriff's Office.
Steve B. Smith, 33, Sydnor's chief deputy for two years, was appointed sheriff June 1, the effective date of Sydnor's retirement. Smith says he was "the first new officer hired by Gene in 1992."
"It was just time for me to go," said the 52-year-old Sydnor, who added that he is enjoying his new job with a backhoe crew.
Staff writer Frank Delano contributed to this report.