Kennebec County voters are returning incumbent sheriff Ken Mason to office for four more years.

Ken Mason

With all communities across the county except for Winthrop reporting results as of 6 p.m. Wednesday, Mason earned 40,167 votes, while challenger Michael Sayers earned 24,171 in unofficial results.

Mason, 58, has served one term as sheriff in Kennebec County.

“I’m humbled by the amount of support I have received from both sides of the aisle,” Mason said Wednesday, after spending Tuesday evening and Wednesday pulling his campaign signs.

Mason attributed his success to his wife, Joanne, who he credited with being a driving force.

“I wouldn’t be where I am without her,” he said.

He said his status as an independent also may have helped him, working with people across party lines.

“I also know how I work, for the good of the county, not myself,” Mason said.

Before his election four years ago, the Readfield resident worked for 12 years as chief deputy in Lincoln County, and before that as a patrolman and field training officer for the Augusta Police Department.

Sayers, 33, a former deputy in the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office and a current Oakland policeman, won the city of Waterville and Rome, where he lives.

Early in the campaign, the members of the Thomas F. Malloy Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 7 issued a brief statement that a majority vote of its members — including patrol deputies, patrol supervisors, detectives and transport deputies — had voted to endorse Sayers in the race.

The Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office, with a budget of $9.6 million and 110 employees, has both a law enforcement division that includes patrol and criminal investigation, and a corrections division that operates the Kennebec County jail. The jail accounts for about 73% of the budget for the Sheriff’s Office, which is turn is about 70% of the county’s $13.6 million budget.

Mason has sought to increase the number of deputies in the law enforcement division as the Maine State Police has scaled back its patrols in Kennebec County.