Toby Shelley wears a lot of hats and uniforms.
There’s his flannel shirt and jeans for work on his family farm in Otisco. There’s his military fatigues and helmet for his service in the Air National Guard. Finally, there’s his solid black ensemble with the Smokey-The-Bear hat when he’s on duty as a deputy sheriff for Onondaga County.
“I’m also a volunteer firefighter in the town of Otisco,” Shelley said. “When my mother passed away, I became the town historian.”
Now he’s throwing all his hats into the race for Onondaga County Sheriff. Shelley is the Working Families Party candidate, running against 16-year incumbent Kevin Walsh, a Republican. Also in the race is Democrat Joe Price, who defeated Shelley in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary. The Onondaga County Democratic Committee had endorsed Shelley before the primary.
In his campaign for sheriff, Shelley wears all his hats well, say friends, family and colleagues. They describe Shelley as stoic but with a dry sense of humor — and a man of many talents whose greatest skill is multitasking.
“Toby would apply the same exuberance and effort to any of those positions,” said Ernie Maffei, a campaign advisor to Shelley and cousin of Rep. Dan Maffei, D-DeWitt. “He’s shown that he’s very well able to multitask in various areas. He’s extremely industrious and a hard-worker.”
In Otisco, Shelley runs a farm that has been in his family for more than 200 years. The oldest barn on the property was built in 1818. The farm has nearly 100 acres and 30 beef cows. He lives on the farm with his wife, three children, two dogs and cat. He built the house himself. It’s heated entirely by wood.
“What I learned about carpentry is that I didn’t know a lot about it after I got the house done,” Shelley said.
Shelley has spent 26 years in the military, including a tour of duty in Turkey and most recently in Iraq from 2006-2007. In 2010, he got his master’s degree in criminal justice, his fifth college degree . The other degrees, in order: a baccalaureate in history in 2007, an associate in fire science in 2003, an associate in liberal arts in 1990 and an associate in logistics in 1988.
In addition to the multitasking, his friends and colleagues credit him with choosing his words carefully, a trait picked up from years in the military. But they also say he has a funny side.
“The one thing people don’t know about Toby is he actually has a sense of humor that is hard to find at first. But once you reach it he really is a funny guy,” said Tom Newton, Shelley’s campaign coordinator.
An example, he and others say, of Shelley’s hidden sense of humor is one of his favorite stories from the sheriff’s office. One time he pulled a woman over who was speeding. He approached her car and asked her if she knew how fast she was going. The woman replied, “No, my speedometer only goes up to 85.”
Shelley describes his sense of humor like this: “It’s a dry sense of humor and if you’re not paying attention you might miss it.”
Shelley decided a couple of years ago he would run for sheriff. “I saw a need for a new kind of vision in the sheriff’s office, a need to improve morale, a need to make it a better place to work for my co-workers and thereby making it a better place for all of us to live in Onondaga County,” Shelley said.
In his campaign, he calls for:
- Controlling overtime in the sheriff’s office, which Shelley says enables some officers to earn more in overtime than their annual base pay.
- Increasing cooperation between the sheriff’s office and the surrounding villages, towns and city police departments by coordinating county services that can be shared, such as a detective task force or a county-wide SWAT team.
- Improving the relationship between sheriff’s office and the citizens of the county by having a friendly police presence at county events. Shelley says this would give the sheriff’s office a chance to open up a dialogue with the community they serve.
After losing the Democratic primary, Shelley remains on the ballot for the Working Families Party. There are 275,330 registered voters in Onondaga County, according to the New York State Board of Elections. There are 1,168 members of the Working Families Party. There are 111,450 registered Democrats in Onondaga County compared to 94,701 registered Republicans.
Shelley acknowledges he faces an uphill climb in the race for sheriff. He likens that to farming.
“A farm teaches you hard work. A farm teaches you not to give up, to keep pushing forward. And those things have carried over in my other occupations and interests,” Shelley said. “Everything I’ve done in my lifee I’ve pushed to try and get to the top, and I think you need those traits if you’re going to get into politics and try and represent the people who would elect you.”
(Michael Contino is a senior with dual majors in broadcast journalism and international relations.)
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