This story will be updated.
Gov. Janet Mills announced on Monday that she will not remove Oxford County Sheriff Christopher Wainwright from office.
The decision marks the culmination of months of inquiries by the Bangor Daily News and Oxford County officials into the misconduct of Wainwright, who was first sworn into his elected office in January 2019 and again in 2023. A Maine governor hasn’t ousted a sheriff since 1926.
Oxford County commissioners in February asked Mills to remove Wainwright for threatening a deputy in 2022 who reported him for asking the deputy to go easy on an acquaintance; for allowing men who were not certified as law enforcement to work as school resource officers despite contracts with school districts mandating certified officers; and for trading guns from the evidence room without telling county officials, conducting an auction or first trying to contact the gun owners as required under Maine law.
At a two-day hearing in April run for Mills by retired Maine Supreme Judicial Court Justice Donald Alexander, Wainwright and his attorney said the sheriff regretted what he had said to the deputy, that giving guns to men hired as school resource officers was a mistake and that three sheriffs before Wainwright had also sold guns from evidence without holding auctions.
Alexander was asked to evaluate whether any of those incidents constituted Wainwright’s failure to “faithfully or efficiently perform any duty imposed on the sheriff by law,” which is the constitutional standard for removal of a sheriff. He said they did not. Mills accepted Alexander’s recommendation that she not remove Wainwright from office.
Mills said her decision shouldn’t be seen as a “vindication of Sheriff Wainwright,” but that the allegations against him aren’t sufficient to remove him from elected office. For example, the governor wrote that the sheriff lacked professionalism when he angrily spoke to his deputy but that it did not appear to be a pattern of behavior.
“In my view, the voters of Oxford County should be the ultimate judge of [Wainwright] on these matters if and when he puts his name before them for reelection in the future,” Mills wrote.
After the decision was released Monday afternoon Wainwright, a Republican who is not up for reelection until 2026, said he trusted that the Democratic governor would rule fairly in his case.
“I feel that it’s a clear vindication,” the sheriff said.
BDN writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this report.
