Waukesha County Sheriff's Captain Nick Ollinger won the Republican primary for sheriff on Tuesday, defeating Waukesha County Board Supervisor John Gscheidmeier by a wide margin and clearing his path to the county's top law enforcement job. With no Democratic or minor-party candidate on the ballot, the primary functioned as the de facto general election, and Ollinger is now set to take office in January.
Ollinger captured roughly 65% of the vote to Gscheidmeier's 34%, according to TMJ4 News. Because no opposing candidates filed by the state deadline, Ollinger will run unopposed in the November 3 general election and is slated to be sworn in as sheriff in January 2027, per The Heartland Post.
The race marked the first open contest for Waukesha County Sheriff in more than a decade. Longtime Sheriff Eric Severson announced in January that he would retire after more than 40 years in local law enforcement, according to CBS 58, setting off a campaign that pitted two candidates with very different résumés against each other.
A Split Between Command Staff and the Rank and File
Ollinger joined the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department as a deputy in 2014 and rose over 12 years to captain, overseeing the agency's Detective Bureau, the outlet notes. Severson himself endorsed Ollinger as his preferred successor. But the department's rank-and-file deputies broke the other way: the Waukesha County Sheriff's Deputy Labor Union backed Gscheidmeier, exposing a divide between administrative leadership and the officers who patrol the county day to day.
Gscheidmeier brought his own extensive résumé to the race, having served as District 3 Waukesha County Board supervisor while drawing on 29 years of public safety experience as a former police officer, firefighter, and educator, according to Waukesha County records. His campaign leaned heavily on staffing concerns, pointing to figures showing that 35% of total department staff and more than 50% of correctional officers had left the agency over the previous three and a half years, a statistic that became central to the July debates covered by Wisconsin Right Now.
Regional Crime Pressures and a Body-Camera Rollout Ahead
During a July candidate forum, Ollinger said roughly 40% to 45% of the Waukesha County Jail population typically originates from east of the county, primarily Milwaukee County — a figure he used to frame the regional scope of the office's public safety challenges, per the same account. That cross-county dynamic is one of several issues Ollinger will inherit alongside the staffing pressures Gscheidmeier raised during the campaign.
Ollinger also arrives at the sheriff's office already managing one of its most visible upcoming projects. As Hoodline reported, the department plans to launch its first body-camera program for patrol deputies by January 1, 2027, a rollout Ollinger has managed through 2026 with a projected cost under $500,000, pending final budget approval from the County Board in November.
Candidates for county constitutional offices like sheriff were required to submit between 500 and 1,000 valid nomination signatures by June 1 to qualify for the August primary ballot, under Wisconsin election rules outlined by Waukesha County. With that threshold cleared and Tuesday's vote decided, Ollinger now heads toward a general election in name only, with the real contest already settled at the ballot box.
How Ollinger addresses deputy retention, manages the cross-county jail population pressures he cited during the campaign, and finalizes County Board approval for the body-camera budget remain open questions as he prepares to take office in January.
