Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

'Big Mike' Mullins To Seek Job As Sheriff

Mike (Big Mike) Mullins has announced he will seek the nomination for sheriff of Nevada County in the Democratic primary May 23.

Mullins was born and raised in Oklahoma. He played basketball for Oklahoma State University and he had a Congressional nomination to West Point Military Academy.

"I have always been called Big Mike, because I am 6'9" and I weigh 400 pounds," he said in a news release.

He met his wife in Mt. Pleasant, Texas, where he worked for Brown and Root Construction Company for 15 years. She was the former Carolyn (Carol) Hill of McCaskill.

She was the daughter of the late Barto and Lillian Hill. Barto was a professional wrestler. Carol has had Elite Private Investigations training.

Mullins and his wife have raised two sons, Donnie, 26, and Clint, 21. They have been married since April 8, 1977, and they have spent most of their married life in Arkansas.

"I, as well as my family, would like for you, the people of Prescott and Nevada County, to give me the opportunity to be your next sheriff," he said, "to change and make Nevada County safer and a better place to live. I'm a man of my word."

"I think the deputies have more to do than work as traffic cops. We have State Troopers for that," he said. "As sheriff of Nevada County, I would not patrol the highways looking for traffic violators. We would, however, try to keep the drunk drivers off the road. I think we have duly elected constables who could take a lot of the workload off the deputies, serving papers, traffic control, etc.

"I have talked to some of the deputies," he continued. "They say that they work up to 80 hours a week, but the county will only pay 40 hours. We could use the constables for some of their work load.

"I have talked to one of the constables and he told me that he was disappointed with the sheriff, because he won't let him have anything to do. As your sheriff, I would use all the constables that I could.

"I think that the jail is in bad shape. If it keeps going as it has in the past, we will end up like Miller County and have to close the jail. Nevada County cannot afford to build a new jail," Mullins said.

"I have talked with an experienced jailer, who applied for a job as jailer and he looked at our jail and told me he would not work there because of the poor security at the jail. As you probably know, we have had three escapes while our present sheriff has been in office. I have a simple plan to make our jail more secure without costing more money.

"If elected as your sheriff, I think I could do more for less cost," he concluded.