DUBLIN, Ga. — Soon, Laurens County will get another four years with Sheriff Larry Dean. This will be Dean's third term, after winning 65.86% of the vote Tuesday night.
For Dean, it's a time to celebrate, but also a time to get to work.
"A sheriff [that has] been working 15 years is a lot more valuable than a sheriff's that's been working eight years," Dean said. "Because you learn something just about every day in this job."
He said he's looking forward to growing his experience, and is already looking at how to make the county safer by working with the state to get more resources for incarcerated folks who have a mental illness.
"I still would like to reach out to the state and see if we can do something about this mental health issues," Dean said. "They've come up with all kinds of pilot programs to have people that don't need to be incarcerated - but the state's got a lot of work to do."
He said he also wants to work with county commissioners to get better retirement benefits for all county employees, not just his staff.
"You can work here 30 years and you only get 30% retirement," Dean said. "And I'd like to see it at least get to where if you worked here 30 years you could get at least 50% retirement when you left this department."
He said Tuesday's results are proof his deputies and team are doing a good job.
"You can win by five votes, and you'll still gonna be the sheriff. But when you win by a large margin, you have proven that, sends a message back to you as the sheriff that you're doing something right," Dean said
Dean said he plans to continue his open door policy throughout the next four years.
"I'm really not being fair to my wife, but- then I took this job on to be available to the public. If you wanna talk to the sheriff here, you can reach me by phone," Dean said.
At the end of the day, he said whether you voted for him or not, he's ready to serve residents for at least another term.
"And I'm gonna do the best of job I can, to be everybody's sheriff. And we're gonna move forward. Let's move this country forward, we live in a great nation, we live in a great county, we live in a great city of Dublin. So I'm gonna move forward," Dean said.
He said as long as he's healthy, and people keep voting for him, he plans to keep running for more terms. Dean ran against Democratic Candidate Tyler Jackson, who wrote on Facebook that he also plans to run again in 2028.