AROUND TOWN: Cobb Sheriff's Race Heats Up

Among the big ticket offices up for election this year is that of Cobb County sheriff. Five candidates are in the race.

In 2020, Democratic challenger Craig Owens ousted longtime Republican Sheriff Neil Warren, bringing GOP control of that position to an end.

Now that he’s wrapping up his first term, Owens finds himself facing Gregory Gilstrap in May’s Democratic primary. Owens faced Gilstrap four years ago and bested him then. If he does so this year, he will square off against the winner of the three GOP candidates vying in the Republican primary: David Cavender, Antaney Hogan and Ricci Mason.

In today’s column, Around Town takes a look at Cavender, 47, who is a sergeant in both the Army Reserves and the Cobb Police Department. Born in Atlanta, Cavender grew up in Clayton County, is a member of the Lovejoy High School Class of 1995, joined the Army and was deployed to Iraq in 2008-2009.

“A lot of the stuff that was going on in that time frame was really stability-like operations, trying to get some kind of infrastructure in for the country to stand on its feet. Seemed like most people there knew it wasn’t going to have much long-lasting impressions after we left, which you know, everybody watched it collapse rather quickly after we left,” Cavender said.

Returning from deployment, Cavender joined the Cobb Police Department in 2010, where he serves as a sergeant at Precinct 3 and on the SWAT team for 10 years.

He has been wounded in the line of duty. On June 25, 2020, while pursuing a carjacking suspect in Cobb, he was shot in the head.

“The first round hit the front of my rifle and split, so just a piece of fragment caught me in the right forehead, which there’s still a small piece in there,” he said. “The second one actually just cut through flesh on the back left side of my head. Neither penetrated so that was good. Ended up being some stitches.”

Cavender recognizes how lucky he was.

“It was super close. It also happened super quick."

Cavender and his wife, Allison, have an 11-month-old daughter. This is the first time he has run for office. What motivated him to do so, he said, was watching Owens on the campaign trail and the promises he made then, and how he’s operated once in office.

“The only thing I’ve really seen him follow through on was getting rid of the 287g program, which I believe needs to come back,” he said of the partnership between ICE and the sheriff's office that Owens canceled upon taking office.

“A lot of people aren’t happy with its removal, especially with the border situation in the last few years," Cavender said.

A principal charge Cavender makes against Owens is that spending at the sheriff’s office is out of control.

"I'm not sure where all the money goes," he said.

Cavender says the sheriff's office duplicates services that the Cobb Police Department does, such as a unit that patrols the streets and issues traffic citations.

While the sheriff’s horse unit isn’t a duplicated service, Cavender called it a useless one that provides no function to the citizens.

“I’m not anti-horse but they serve no benefit to the taxpayers and I don’t know why we foot the bill for that,” he said.

He also wonders why the sheriff has a protection detail that follows him around. Why Owens needs a security detail that drives him around and follows him everywhere when the Cobb police chief and deputy police chief drive themselves is puzzling to Cavender.

“It doesn’t send a good message that apparently you don’t feel safe in your own county,” he said, saying Owens has at least five assigned to the detail, if not more.

Some of Owens' other executive staff also have drivers who pose as security details for them, Cavender said.

“Like I said, you start talking about 5-8 personnel plus salaries and total compensation package, plus the vehicles that are assigned to them, and the taxpayers are on the conservative end paying over a million a year for that service, which to me provides no benefit to the community in general."

Cavender is also critical of the time it takes police officers to book someone in the county jail, which is under the command of the sheriff's office. There's a lack of urgency in processing inmates such that it takes police officers one to two hours to book someone in the jail, which he said means less time on the road to fight crime.

“The bottom line is for me, if you’re going to serve in public office, you should be there for the benefit of the public. I think that should come first for the community you serve and not for friends and family members to get jobs and make units that just follow you around," he said.

Cavender also said Owens campaigned on ending the deaths in the jail that were occurring under his predecessor.

“The deaths haven’t slowed at all,” he said.

In the November 2020 election, Owens cleaned Warren's clock, receiving 213,143 votes or 55% of the vote compared to Warren's 44.7% or 172,706 votes.

Cavender is running as a Republican in a blue county. How does he plan to win?

“Well, it’s definitely an uphill battle," he acknowledged. "I do believe there’s a pathway for a Republican to win in this county, and at the end of the day, that position is an elected position for all the citizens in the county, regardless which side of ballot you vote down. One of my main priorities is just to get in front of people and talk to people."

Around Town rang Owens to ask if he cared to respond to Cavender's charges. Owens said his record speaks for itself.

“I stand on my record and the job I’ve done for the past three years as the Cobb sheriff,” Owens said. "The Cobb Sheriff’s Office has now been recognized as one of the best-ranked sheriff’s offices in the state of Georgia if not the nation. We have won numerous awards. We are Triple Crown Accredited and the Sitting Sheriff of the Year. So I stand by what I’ve done for my last three years in office, matched up against anyone.”

DIVIDED DELEGATION: Saturday's Around Town column covered some of the big items the Georgia General Assembly addressed under the Gold Dome this most recent legislative session. State Rep. Teri Anulewicz, D-Smyrna, and state Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, had some more takes on the session that did not find space in that column. Cobb’s six-member Senate contingent formed its own delegation this session, with Setzler selected as co-chair alongside state Sen. Michael “Doc” Rhett, D-Marietta.

Anulewicz chairs the Cobb Legislative Delegation, which includes all state representatives and senators representing parts of Cobb.

Setzler said the news media, Cobb citizens and even legislators misperceived the relationship between representatives and senators – that they are “somehow tied together in ways that are not laid out in our state Constitution.”

However, Setzler noted that there’s nothing to bind either chamber’s members to the others’ votes, and House members operate within House rules and Senate members within Senate rules.

This misperception extended to the spat over the Cobb Board of Education maps, as Setzler said the local legislative process never bound him or other senators to adopt the map put forward by Anulewicz and signed onto by a majority of Cobb’s House members.

Formalizing a Cobb Senate Delegation, Setzler said, got rid of any confusion over the powers and roles of the co-equal chambers.

Anulewicz sees the forming of the Cobb Senate Delegation as emblematic of the larger House-Senate divide in the General Assembly, noting House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said at the end of the session that the House was results-oriented," while “some folks” – read the Senate – “choose politics.”

Cobb senators voted on the rules for the full Legislative Delegation at the start of the session, Anulewicz noted.

“The rules of the delegation specify that the Cobb Legislative Delegation consists of members of the House and the Senate whose district includes any portion of Cobb County,” Anulewicz said.

She takes no issue with the Cobb Senate Delegation existing for the purpose of making decisions on bills in the Senate.

“But to the extent that it’s a formal delegation, it just isn’t,” Anulewicz said.

No Cobb legislators have proposed changing the rules of the Cobb Legislative Delegation. For example, as far as she or anyone else is concerned, Rhett, the co-chair of the Senate Delegation, is still the treasurer of the full delegation.

“So I’m honestly not quite certain what the Senate Delegation is beyond just the senators who are from Cobb that are in the Senate, just like we have the House members from Cobb who are in the House,” Anulewicz said.

A question Around Town has is that if the Cobb County Legislative Delegation is, as Setzler has suggested, nothing more than a paper tiger, how did it manage to appoint two Democrats to the five-member Cobb Elections Board, thus flipping that board from Republican to Democratic control?

MEET THE CANDIDATES at the Cobb Republican Women’s Club’s “Get the 4-1-1” Candidate Forum this Thursday. The event at Boxwood Social Hall in Marietta will give attendees the opportunity to hear from the Cobb GOP’s candidates for the Georgia State House and Senate, the Cobb County School Board, the Cobb Board of Commissioners, Cobb County Sheriff, clerk of the Cobb State Court and clerk of the Cobb Superior Court.

At the federal level are the GOP’s candidates for U.S. Congress. U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Cassville, and two of his primary challengers, Mike Pons and Lori Pesta, will be in attendance. Jeff Criswell, who is running in the 6th Congressional District, will also be there.

Perhaps the most recognizable of Republican candidates, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome, will be calling in by video, according to the event’s advertisement.

Tickets to the forum, which will be moderated by “The Georgia Gang” panelist Janelle King, are $25 and can be purchased at www.ccrwc.org.