HAYS COUNTY, Texas — Hays County will elect a new sheriff this November, and voters have a big decision before them as they head to the polls.
After nearly 15 years, Sheriff Gary Cutler is retiring, and Republican Anthony Hipolito and Democrat Alex Villalobos are hoping to take his spot.
“This is something I’ve been wanting to do for, probably, the last 15 years … I’ve known Sheriff Cutler for a long, long time. Hays County is a special place to me,” Hipolito said.
Hipolito has 26 years of law enforcement experience, with 23 years serving at the Austin Police Department. He’s currently the Hays County Sheriff’s Office community outreach deputy.
Villalobos currently works as the Hays County Chief of Staff and ran for sheriff previously against the long-time incumbent Cutler, losing narrowly in 2020.
Villalobos is also a former member of the Kyle City Council, spent 11 years as a peace officer and served as an educator at Texas State University.
“It’s an honorable thing to do,” Villalobos said. “It’s good to be a part of your community and really be engaged in all aspects.”
Both candidates agree that one of their top priorities is tackling the rapid growth Hays County is seeing and the potential crime it could bring.
Both say it starts with recruiting and retaining more staff.
“A huge priority for me is to come in and establish a culture of value. If we do that, it makes ourselves more marketable,” Hipolito said. “We, as a sheriff’s office, have to be proactive and create a recruiting unit to come out and go out and recruit the best of the best.”
Villalobos has a similar idea.
“When you can build and create consistency across the board, and give them the right type of support, the organization recruits for itself because the morale increases,” Villalobos said. “Everybody loves to come to work and that shows.”
Hipolito says he also wants to focus on integrating more technology to head off crime before it happens, to have school resource officers staffed at every school in the district and to collaborate more with other agencies.
“Another goal of mine is to just to keep the crime as low as possible,” Hipolito said. “Everybody deserves to live, walk in their neighborhoods without anything bad happening to them.”
Villalobos says he wants to focus on increasing police presence and building back relationships with the public, creating programs to prevent the use of drugs in the community and modernizing police techniques by being more transparent and using more technology.
“We’re bringing back the community policing model so that we can prevent crimes, so that we can be better engaged with our community– it is very important.” Villalobos said. “How we engage is modernizing technology to be able to ensure that people have access to all the data for the organization, modernizing our policies for releasing videos to the community, as well.”
Both candidates say they’re the man for the job.
Hipolito says his longtime experience in police work sets him apart from his opponent. He says he has double the amount of experience and Villalobos’ educational background isn’t up to par with that.
“The things I’ve seen, the split second, critical decisions I’ve made over and over again … I know how to police in a large city,” Hipolito said. “Hays County is just not a small county anymore. With growth comes problems, comes crime. I know how to tackle that.”
Villalobos says his background in criminal justice, public administration, his experience as a businessman, working with county officials and his time in law enforcement makes him a well-rounded choice.
“I work with every elected official in this entire county on a consistent basis to drive to a better goal; the better goal of Hays County and its national growth trends, economic development, public safety, emergency management,” Villalobos said. “My experience speaks for itself and it can stand on its own. My opponent has done some time with a PD but doesn’t have the education, doesn’t have the experience that I have.”
Early voting continues through Nov. 1. The general election is Nov. 5.