Mark Nicastle, a 30-veteran of the Adams County Sheriff’s Department, recently decided to leave the Democratic Party and become a Republican this year to run against his boss, Sheriff Doug Darr. Although a Democrat most of his adult life, Nicastle said the switch was easy. "I feel like a lost guy and I just came back home again," he explained. 

Adams County Republicans have welcomed Nicastle with open arms. County Chair Clark Bolser is glad to have a well respected member of the law enforcement community running as a Republican. He also hopes voters see the sheriff’s race as an opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to term limits. Darr is only able to run for a third term because the Democrat Adams County Commissioners placed a voter referendum on the November 2009 ballot allowing third terms for Adams County office holders.

Nicastle joined the Adams Sheriff Department in 1980 at the age of 21. Even back then he set his sights on being sheriff someday. He remembers his supervisor laughing at his youthful ambition when Nicastle revealed his aspirations in one of his evaluations. Yet despite his conservative political philosophy, being a Democrat was practically a requirement if you wanted to advance through the ranks of the sheriff department in the 1980s, Nicastle said. "Sheriff Burt Johnson wouldn’t allow you to live outside of the county because he wanted you to vote for him," said Nicastle. "It sounds too archaic for people to believe, but it was the truth."

Nicastle said most rank and file police officers and sheriff personnel are independents or Republicans. "I have been very, very conservative. We are a Christian family. All the beliefs the Republicans have about freedom and the free enterprise system, we have always believed in," he said. His fellow Adam County Sheriff colleagues didn’t seem to mind the party switch. Earlier this month they voted, as members of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #1, 149 to 47 to endorse Nicastle for Sheriff over their current boss Darr. This was one of the largest voter turnouts in organization’s history.

The vote was secret and sheriff department’s personnel remain quiet in public about their support for Nicastle for obvious reasons. "When I walk into a room now, people avoid me," he said with a smile. But through private notes people slip him and private conversations, he has heard why people are turning against Darr. They don’t like his leadership style, he explains. "In today’s workforce people want to see, speak to and have a leader in the organization that knows their wife is pregnant, that it’s their first child, that their wife has cancer, and go figure, that the sheriff might know them by their first name," Nicastle said. " I think that is what the organization misses."

Nicastle has held numerous leadership positions within the department over that last 30 years, from detective to Lt. Commander of the North Metro Drug Task force. Nicastle recalls with a laugh how Sheriff Darr tells him he needs to learn to be more regal, but that is just not Nicastle’s style. "I’m one of those guys that wakes up in the morning and thinks he is a dumb ass and wants to go out and learn something new. And usually I find out something new from the people doing the work," Nicastle explains. "I’m that way clear to the core. It’s not phony. It’s real and I think that has been observed by the people in the organization and they want more of it." Nicastle’s brochure touts his leadership philosophy with the following headline, "Servant Leadership Public Safety."

While Dar has been externally focused and distant from the inner workings and the lives of those running the Adams County Sheriff Department, Nicastle wants to focus on the health and well being of the organization itself. He wants to be walking up and down the hallways of the jail, visiting with people, and hearing their vision for the organization. "This helps the organization grow. It helps people feel they have a vested interest in the organization," Nicastle said.

Nicastle has tested this leadership style through years of practice. After driving a patrol car for the first four years of his Sheriff Department career, he joined the Special Crimes and Tactics unit in 1984 that specialized in cracking down on drug dealers and prostitution. He said he got really good at buying drugs from drug dealers and then breaking up their drug rings. When the sheriff’s department started his first SWAT team in the mid-80, Nicastle joined and was trained by the FBI as the point man, or the first one through the door. Nicastle remembers buying the SWAT team’s first van, an old Rainbow Bread truck.

Nicastle as been the Commander of the North Metro Drug Task Force; commanded Adams County Public Safety in three Divisions.: Detectives, Patrol and Jail; and commanded Adams County Public Safety Special Weapons and Tactics Unit, Bomb Squad and K-9 Units. On top of this he has 13 years experience in special investigations for Adams County Vice and Narcotics Units, Drug Task Forces and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

He was born in Rochester, NY into a family with three brothers and a sister. Nicastle’s parents worked for Eastman Kodak and moved the family to Colorado in 1971 when Kodak built their plant in Windsor, CO. He graduated from Loveland High School and attended University of Northern Colorado and Metropolitan State College and graduated with a BA Law Enforcement and a minor in Sociology. He lives in Brighton, CO with his wife of 26 years. He has four grown children, three boys and a girl and one granddaughter. For anyone interested in being part of his campaign check out his web site a www.nicastleforsheriff.org or contact him at (303) 659-6404 or nicastleforsheriff@skybeam.com.

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