Growing up, the closest thing Morgan Ballis had to a sport was running from the cops.
He isn’t proud of those days as a self-described latchkey kid roaming free-range in Tucson, Arizona. But tracing it back, his life changed the day he wasn’t fast enough to outrun his troubles. An arrest put the retired Marine Infantry Platoon Sergeant, school safety consultant and Hailey School Resource Officer on a path to his newest and highest role: Blaine County Sheriff. Voters elected Ballis in a November landslide, choosing the 39-year-old Democrat with nearly three-to-one support.
As a teenager, the county’s new top cop was on the other side of law enforcement. At 16, Ballis and a crew of boys stole a wallet from a Jeep, an offense that carried a felony burglary charge. Ballis went into a diversion program—sort of a youth probation.
“So, what do you want to do after high school?” his diversion officer asked in their first meeting.
Ballis is the son of a military father. As a kid, he and his brother would save up cash and rollerblade down to a used bookstore to buy documentaries about World War II. In the raw years after 9/11, he’d considered every branch, and knew which one he’d choose. He said he planned to join the Marines.
“You will never join my Marine Corps,” the older soldier replied.
“Of course, that lit a fire under my ass,” Ballis says now. “I’m the type of guy, if you tell me I can’t do something, that’s gonna be my motivation to go out there and do it.”
That officer, along with a Marine recruiter, mentored Ballis through graduation and into the Corps.
Ballis spent 11 years in the Marines, from 2004 until 2015. He was deployed into combat twice, both times in Ramadi, Iraq, first as an automatic weapon gunner and then as an infantry squad leader. The months in Ramadi were “very kinetic,” he says—an operational euphemism for violent in the extreme.
“I mean, almost daily firefights,” he recalls. In the years that followed graduation, five of Ballis’ classmates from the Mountain View High School class of 2004 died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, a rate unmatched by any other school in the country, according to reports at the time.
After combat, Ballis came home to other jobs in the Corps. He excelled in softer roles, counseling families of the recently deployed and recruiting new Marines. He learned how to talk to people without falling back on rank.
“My status, my awards, none of those things mattered,” he said. “It’s really where I think I truly embraced the idea of empathy, learning about people and what they were doing.”
That outlook was soon tested. On Jan. 8, 2011, Ballis’ mother went to buy dinner at a Safeway near her home in Tucson. Out front, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was greeting constituents. Ballis’ mother stopped to talk as a gunman opened fire. She wasn’t hit, but the man she was speaking to was. She put pressure on his leg, staunching his femoral artery while paramedics came. Giffords was shot in the head. The man Ballis’ mother saved was Ron Barber, who went on to represent the district in Congress as Giffords convalesced.
The shooting touched Morgan Ballis at an unsettled time. He was starting a family. And he had an idea for a company, one that would train police in military firearm tactics to handle mass shootings like the one at Safeway. A few years later, as his son was entering school, Ballis was in line for another deployment overseas. He was more than halfway to his pension. A superior gave him a choice: Take the deployment or leave the Marines.
“I was like, you know what, being a good dad isn’t about bringing home a paycheck, it’s about being present,” he said. “That’s when I made the decision to transition out.”
As a civilian, Ballis decided to study the academic side of active shooter responses. He earned a bachelor’s degree, then a master’s, and is working towards a Ph.D. (His dissertation looks at how school resource officers in Idaho uptake active shooter protocols.) His expertise made him a vocal member of the Wood River Middle School PTA, and his involvement helped get him a job with the Hailey Police Department as a school resource officer, or SRO. That, in turn, set him up for a run at sheriff—and a campaign that took a deep emotional toll.
In February 2024, Desi Ballis, Morgan’s wife, was pregnant with their third child. They’d already chosen a name, should it be a boy: Tucker Finn. But the 20-week ultrasound came back abnormal. Tucker’s development had veered off course, and he was almost certain to die before delivery. If they waited too long, Desi might, too. The Ballises are a devout couple, and the diagnosis that Desi would need an abortion to protect her life hit hard. So did Idaho’s laws: Under the state’s strict ban, she’d have to travel to Utah for care. They drove the 10-hour round trip to Salt Lake City for an abortion.
In the days that followed, Ballis found himself looking to God for answers. Two weeks before the candidate filing deadline, someone he never met approached him and asked if he’d ever consider running for Sheriff—as a Democrat. Ballis had been a lifelong Republican, raised by a conservative family with a strong Christian faith. But the direction of the Idaho GOP gave him pause, and he’d registered as an Independent when he relocated. The experience with Tucker had caused a disconnect between himself and the Republican party. For the first time in his life, he identified more with the Democrats around him. So, in “the darkest time of our lives,” Ballis switched allegiances, and entered politics.
“I felt like God was giving me a not-so-gentle nudge,” he said.
Fully staffed, the Blaine County Sheriff’s Office is about the size of a Marine platoon. Parachuting in to take the lead hasn’t been a problem, Ballis said. You dive in, get information and ideas from the people on the ground, and come up with systems that fit. He calls it “service leadership”: “Your job is to actually get your hands dirty, get out there and serve.”
“It’s a huge leap, to go from being an SRO with three years’ experience to the Sheriff running the lead agency in the county,” he said. “For me, it’s about being humble to understand that I’m here, I truly believe, by the grace of God, and that I want to have a positive impact during this time.”