Embattled Woodward County sheriff survives in primary race

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July 29, 2008

Staff reports

Suspended Woodward County Sheriff Les Morton survived one political battle Tuesday and will fight another day in his re-election bid.

Morton, who is facing nine felony counts of embezzlement, finished second in the Demo-cratic primary and earned a place in the Aug. 26 runoff.

He polled 501 votes, or 35.31 percent of the vote, Tuesday to finish second to Joe A. Adams, a current Woodward County deputy who had 670 votes, or 47.22 percent. Travis Painter finished third with 248 votes. The runoff is re-quired since no candidate received a majority of the votes cast.

On the Republi-can side of the race, Gary Stanley, a former deputy, defeated retired police officer Max N. Nelson 1,309-821 to earn his party’s nomination in the Nov. 4 general election.

In a survey sent by the News & Eagle to all candidates, Stanley said the No. 1 issue facing Woodward County was drugs. He said, if elected, he planned to address the issue by educating children and their parents and aggressively pursuing drug dealers.

Neither Adams nor Morton responded to the survey.

Stanley has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Northwestern Okla-homa State Univer-sity. He worked for Woodward County Sheriff’s Office for 18 years and was on the Woodward Po-lice Department for more than five years.

Earlier this month, the Oklahoma Attorney Gen-eral’s Office dropped 20 felony fraud counts against Morton.

Morton’s attorney, Mack Martin, had filed a motion to dismiss all 29 counts against the suspended sheriff July 17. In his motion, Martin stated the fraud accusations had been settled in August 2005 when the sheriff and special prosecutor Gene Christian agreed Morton would repay Woodward County $6,594.98 for expenses and travel claims allegedly not properly documented.

In his motion, Martin said since the restitution deal had been reached and completed, the entire case was settled and the fraud charges should never have been filed.

A hearing on Martin’s motion to dismiss the remaining nine charges against Morton is scheduled for 2 p.m. Aug. 5 in Wood-ward County District Court.

Those nine counts allege Morton used a county Fuelman credit card and a county vehicle for personal business in October, November and December 2005, February, March, April, July and August 2006 and November 2007 — all after the reimbursement agreement was completed. The amount of funds involved is just under $800.

Morton was indicted in March by a Woodward County grand jury and was suspended from office at that time. The grand jury indictment was dropped in June and refiled by the Oklahoma Attorney Gener-al’s office.