METAIRIE— Joseph Lopinto, III has been elected to serve his first full term as Sheriff of Jefferson Parish.
Lopinto, a former state representative who’s also an attorney, was elected sheriff back in March of 2018 to fill the remaining term of Newell Norman. After serving as Sheriff of Jefferson Parish for almost 10 years, Norman stepped away from the office to pursue a career in broadcasting.
Lopinto spoke to WGNO about some of the plans he’d like to implement for the sheriff’s office, “I’d love to be able to give our deputies a raise and I”m working towards that being able to lower our budget this past year. Lower some of our personnel costs but it’s something that doesn’t happen overnight. If you’re gonna live within the same budget and not go to the taxpayers for additional money then you’ve got to make hard choices in order to try to do it and I’m going to make that happen shortly”
As was the case with the election in 2018, Lopinto’s biggest challenger was Col. John Fortunato, the longtime former pubic information officer for JPSO. The 2018 contest was a heated affair with accusations of improprieties from both camps.
In 2018, Lopinto defeated Fortunato 52%-48% of the vote. Tonight’s results from the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office assign 62% of the vote to Lopinto, with 66,540 votes. Col. John Fortunato and Anthony Bloise had 31% and 6% respectively.
