<\/p>\n
Newly elected officials in La Plata County were sworn in Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The November election brought in some new faces, as well as some old. A total of seven people were sworn in Tuesday at the La Plata County Courthouse by Judge William Herringer.<\/p>\n
La Plata County Sheriff Sean Smith, a Democrat, enters his second four-year term. Receiving 16,109 votes, he defeated Republican challenger Charles Hamby (10,449 votes) and unaffiliated candidate Dean Mize (1,573 votes).<\/em>Clyde Church, a Democrat, will start his first term as a La Plata County commissioner. Church, a Falls Creek resident, beat incumbent Republican Brad Blake by a total of 23 votes. It will be the first time one party has held the entire three-member Board of County Commissioners since the 1940s.<\/em>Incumbent Treasurer Allison Aichele, a Democrat, will also enter her second four-year term after beating Republican challenger Colton Black by a vote of 13,872 to 13,629, a difference of 243 votes. Aichele was first elected in 2014 after the retirement of longtime treasurer Ed Murray.<\/em>Incumbent La Plata County Clerk & Recorder Tiffany Parker, a Republican who ran unopposed, will enter her third four-year term. Parker was first elected in 2010, beating Democratic candidate Karen Phelan. She has since run unopposed.<\/em>Carrie Woodson will become La Plata County\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new assessor, after Craig Larson, who held the position for 32 years, retired. Woodson, a Democrat, ran unopposed and has worked at the office for more than two decades.<\/em>La Plata County Coroner Jann Smith was also sworn in Tuesday. Smith was first appointed as coroner in 2012 after her predecessor, Carol Huser, left her term early. Smith, a Republican, was first elected in 2014, beating unaffiliated candidate Beverly Begay. Smith ran unopposed in November.<\/em>Incumbent La Plata County Surveyor Steven McCormack was elected unopposed in November. McCormack was not in attendance Tuesday and but was previously sworn in by Parker. McCormack, a Republican, was appointed in 2015 and first elected in 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Election brings in some familiar faces, some new<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1512,308,4852],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-63560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-la-plata-county-government","tag-local-elections","tag-tiffany-parker"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63560"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=63560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}