Lauren Arikan

Committee Name: Friends of Lauren Arikan

Address: P.O. Box 135

Jarrettsville, MD 21084-

Email: electarikan@gmail.com

Website: www.electarikan.com

Social: facebook.com/Lauren Arikan

Lauren Arikan: The Mother and Farmer Who Already Fights for District 7B

Maryland House District 7B is Harford County — Jarrettsville, Abingdon, Monkton country, the farms and neighborhoods that sit between Baltimore County’s edge and the rest of northern Harford. Since January 2019 the woman holding that seat has been a Republican mother of four who runs a family farm and a family business and still shows up in Annapolis as if the votes belonged to the people who pay the bills. On November 3 she is asking to keep the job. Her name is Lauren C. Arikan.

She is not a consultant who discovered rural Maryland on a walk. She is a farmer and a small-business woman who decided Annapolis needed someone who still knew what a household budget and a birth looked like.

Who she is

Lauren Arikan was born December 14, 1984, in Ellicott City. She attended McDaniel College and the University of Baltimore, where she studied English language and literature. Since 2009 she has worked as director of public relations for the family firm, Arikan Accounting and Tax. Since 2014 she has farmed poultry and dairy goats at Arikan Acres. Since 2016 she has owned Arikan Investments. That is not a campaign slogan. That is how the family eats.

She founded Birth Circle of Baltimore in 2014 — free peer support for women through childbearing years and after. She sat on the board of Maryland Friends of Midwives from 2012 to 2014. She chaired Love Maryland PAC from 2015 to 2018, built to defend parental rights and medical autonomy when Annapolis started treating both as optional. She is vice president of the Victoria Russell Foundation. She is a member of the Harford County Republican Women’s Club and the Maryland Federation of Republican Women. She attends Kingdom Minded Church in Darlington.

She has four children. Addresses associated with her over the years include Jarrettsville, Monkton, and Abingdon. The district is those places. So is she.

How she got to the House

She did not wait for a vacancy to invent an interest in public life. She started advocating for parental rights and medical autonomy around 2010. Love Maryland PAC was the next step. In 2018 she filed for the old multi-member District 7 — a thirteen-candidate Republican primary. She finished third with 13.6 percent and earned a spot on the November ballot. In the general she received 35,476 votes, 23.3 percent, and was elected alongside Kathy Szeliga and Richard Impallaria.

She was sworn in January 9, 2019. After redistricting she ran in the new single-member District 7B in 2022 and won 67.2 percent to 32.6 percent against Democrat Medford Campbell III — 12,915 votes to 6,267. On June 23, 2026, she won the Republican primary unopposed with 4,144 votes. The general election is November 3 against Democrat Candace Hart.

What she does in Annapolis

She sits on the House Judiciary Committee and its Civil Law and Procedure and Criminal Law and Procedure subcommittees. She has served on Public Safety and Juvenile Law subcommittees. She was deputy minority whip from 2019 to 2021. She served as secretary, first vice president, and vice president of the Women Legislators of Maryland. She is a member of the Maryland Freedom Caucus.

That committee list is the job description of a district that still cares about crime, families, and the difference between a statute and a slogan. Judiciary is where the bills land that decide whether a sanctuary policy is treated as compassion or as a public-safety problem; whether a parent still has a say; whether a lawful gun owner is a constituent or a suspect.

She has been a consistent vote against sanctuary-state policy and a consistent voice for cooperation with ICE and the 287(g) program. She has pressed the Moore administration to treat immigration enforcement as a duty, not a branding problem. She is pro-life and has said she will stand for the unborn, the elderly, and the disabled. She is pro-Second Amendment. She has opposed school mask mandates and introduced language that would have let parents in districts without full in-person instruction use the state’s per-pupil spending on other schooling. She talks about taxes the way a woman who has worked an accounting desk talks about them: Maryland’s fees and rates are not abstractions. They come out of the same household that is already paying for feed, fuel, and groceries.

Congressman Andy Harris has endorsed her as a pro-life, Second Amendment, anti-sanctuary conservative who will fight for families the way he fights in Washington. Delegate Kathy Szeliga has called her a partner who does not back down on the floor, in committee, or in front of a camera.

Why vote for her

Because District 7B is Harford, and Harford should keep sending a delegate who still lives here as a mother and a farmer instead of describing the district from a press release.

Because she has already done the job for nearly eight years. The 2022 result was not an accident. The district already measured her after redistricting made the seat hers alone.

Because a woman who founded a birth-support circle and chaired a parental-rights PAC is not interchangeable with a candidate who discovered “families” in a primary questionnaire. Love Maryland PAC existed before she had a title. Birth Circle existed before she had a parking space in Annapolis.

Because Judiciary is where the culture-war bills and the crime bills both go, and a Freedom Caucus member on that committee is the difference between a district that is represented and a district that is lectured.

Because she understands the tax file from the inside of a family accounting practice. High taxes and frivolous fees are not a talking point for her. They are the work product she has watched land on kitchen tables since 2009.

Because she will not treat sanctuary policy as a moral accessory. She has said the policy harms safety and spends tax money without contribution. That is the correct order of operations for a Harford district that still expects the law to mean something.

Because she will not treat the unborn, the elderly, or the disabled as a coalition to be managed. She has said every human life is the point.

Because she already won this seat the hard way — a crowded 2018 primary, a multi-member general, then a 67 percent single-member win after the maps changed. That is a record, not a trial balloon.

Because the alternative is a Democratic nominee in a district that has already told Annapolis, twice, that it prefers the Republican who farms, keeps the books, and does not apologize for the values that built the place.

District 7B does not need a new theory of Harford County. It needs the delegate who already raised four children here, already ran the farm and the family firm, already fought for parental rights before she had a gavel, and already held the seat through redistricting. Lauren Arikan has been that delegate since January 2019. November 3 is the chance to keep her there.

Vote Lauren Arikan for Maryland House of Delegates, District 7B.

Committee Name: Elliott J. Herneker for District 34A

Address: 2206 Old Emmorton Rd. Ste. 100

Bel Air, MD 21015-

Phone: (240) 589-0778

Email: EJHfordistricta@gmail.com

Social: facebook.com/ElliottHernekerforDistrict34A

www.instagram.com: @ejfordistricta

Elliott Joseph Herneker: A Harford Son Asking District 34A to Send a Worker to Annapolis

District 34A is a two-seat House district covering the southern spine of Harford County — Edgewood, Aberdeen, Havre de Grace, and the Route 40 corridor that keeps the rest of the county moving. On November 3, voters there can choose two names. One of them should be Elliott Joseph Herneker.

He is not a career politician. He is a lifelong Harford County resident whose family has been here since the 1970s. He grew up in Edgewood. He graduated from Harford Technical High School in 2021. He earned an associate degree in political science from Harford Community College in 2023 while working, then a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Maryland Global Campus in 2025. He is preparing for law school. He is twenty-three now and will be twenty-four on Election Day. That is not a weakness. That is a generation that still has to live with the bills Annapolis is writing.

For five years he has worked at UPS in Aberdeen, first on the floor and now as a supervisor. That is not a talking point. That is a job. He manages people, meets deadlines, and watches working families try to keep up with energy bills, groceries, housing, and the quiet pile of fees and mandates that never show up as a “tax increase” on a press release. He says the cost of living is the number one issue in this county. He is right. He is living it.

He chairs the Harford County Young Republicans after serving as the organization’s secretary. He interned on Larry Hogan’s 2024 U.S. Senate campaign and learned how statewide outreach actually works — not from a brochure, from the work. He shows up at Route 40 business nights, candidate forums, and Republican events without waiting for someone to hand him a script. Maryland Republicans nominated him for the House in District 34A. In the June 23 primary he was unopposed and took 3,120 votes. He is the Republican on the November ballot against two Democratic incumbents, Andre V. Johnson Jr. and Steven C. Johnson.

His campaign line is blunt on purpose: Too expensive. Too slow. Let’s fix it.

That is the right diagnosis. Families in 34A are being squeezed from every direction. Utility bills keep rising. Groceries cost more. Starter homes and first-time buyers are getting priced out of the county their parents could still afford. Permits drag. Small businesses along Route 40 tell the same story Herneker heard at Coakley’s in Havre de Grace: Maryland makes it too hard and too slow to expand, improve a property, or simply get a project moving. He wants a permitting system that is efficient and predictable without throwing standards overboard. That is not radical. That is how you keep jobs and young families here.

On the issues he is clear and local.

Affordability first. Fight the quiet cost increases that arrive as surcharges, fees, and mandates. Demand transparency from utilities. Keep tax and regulatory pressure from punishing the people who already work.

Housing without wrecking the place. Protect the character of Harford communities. Cut unnecessary permitting delays. Encourage the right kind of development in the right places. Open practical paths for first-time buyers and workforce housing so the next generation is not forced out.

Jobs close to home. Defense, manufacturing, logistics, technology, agriculture, and the skilled trades are this county’s backbone. Reduce red tape on small businesses, builders, and employers. Work with local economic development so good pay stays in Harford instead of commuting out of it.

Classrooms that work. Safe, orderly schools where teachers can teach and students can learn. Strengthen the basics. Expand career and technical education, apprenticeships, and workforce pathways — the same kind of path that started for him at Harford Tech.

Public safety without apology. Support recruitment, retention, and morale for law enforcement. Treat fentanyl, trafficking, and overdose as the public-safety threats they are. Expand mental-health care, addiction treatment, peer support, recovery housing, and recovery-to-work.

Energy that actually stays on. An all-of-the-above strategy that puts reliability and cost first, not slogans.

He is not asking District 34A to send another professional Annapolis resident. He is asking it to send a neighbor who grew up here, works here, earned his degrees here, and still has to open the same bills the rest of the district opens. Youth in this office is not a novelty if the young man already knows the county, already leads other young conservatives, and already talks like someone who intends to stay.

Vote for two in 34A. One of those votes should be for the Harford son who is not waiting his turn. Elliott Joseph Herneker.

Committee Name: Friends of Steve Johnson

Address: 305 Fords Lane

Aberdeen, MD 21001-

Phone: (443) 756-2029

Email: stevejohnson21001@gmail.com

Website: friendsofstevejohnson.com

Social: facebook.com/friendsofstevejohnson

Steve Johnson: The Pharmacy Owner Who Couldn’t Prove He Lived in Aberdeen

District 34A is a two-seat House district covering Aberdeen, Edgewood, and Havre de Grace. One of those seats belongs to Steven C. Johnson, the Democrat who has occupied it since January 9, 2019. He wants another term. The other Democrat on the ballot is Andre V. Johnson Jr. The only Republican is Elliott Joseph Herneker. If you give Steve Johnson another vote, you are giving Annapolis another reliable vote it already has.

Start with who he is, not who the campaign website says he is.

He was born December 30, 1960, in Garrison, Kentucky, and raised in West Virginia. Shady Spring High School. Raleigh County Vocational Technical Center. Army National Guard from 1977 to 1987. He has lived in Maryland since 1980. The official biography is a résumé of jobs, not a record of office: electrician’s helper, auto shop, Bendix, RCA/General Electric, an RV outfit, UPS from 1990 to 2000, Rite Aid’s distribution center from 2000 to 2002. Then the businesses — a rental-property company, a commercial cleaning company, and Johnson Family Pharmacy in downtown Aberdeen. From 2005 to 2017 he was Aberdeen’s director of economic development. From 2006 to 2016 he was an auxiliary police officer. Chamber boards. Lions Club. Tourism board. Revolving loan fund. That is the local-boy stack he runs on. It is not an elected record. Until 2018 he had never won a race for anything.

The first time he tried, the city told him he did not live there.

In 2007 Johnson filed for Aberdeen City Council. The city’s Board of Elections threw him off the ballot. The problem was simple and documented. He owned a house on Post Road inside the city and a larger property on Ford’s Lane in Perryman, outside the city. State property records listed the Perryman address as his primary residence. Homestead tax credit: Perryman. Water and sewer bills: mailed to Perryman. Rent checks paid to him: Perryman. The personal check he used to pay his own filing fee listed Perryman. His driver’s license was changed to the Aberdeen address three days before the filing deadline. Council President Mike Hiob said he had driven Johnson’s daughter home to the Ford’s Lane house. Johnson sued in Circuit Court and nearly postponed the entire municipal election. A judge told him to take the appeal through the City Council first. Johnson then dropped the case, saying he did not want to “alter the natural outcome of the election.” The city election went on without him. The first time Harford voters were asked whether Steve Johnson lived where he said he lived, the official answer was no.

He ran for the House in 2014 and lost the Democratic primary with 18.4 percent. In 2018 he finally won — by 165 votes over Republican incumbent Glen Glass after the mail ballots were counted. That is not a landslide. That is a coin flip that landed on the Democratic side of a two-seat district in a blue wave year. In 2022 he finished second of four with 12,029 votes, 26.4 percent, behind Andre Johnson and just ahead of Glass again. In the June 23, 2026 Democratic primary he ran behind his ticket-mate again: Andre Johnson 5,461 votes, 53.6 percent; Steve Johnson 4,719 votes, 46.4 percent. Even his own primary voters ranked him second.

Since January 2019 he has sat on Health and Government Operations and nowhere else that matters. Deputy majority whip since 2023. That title is not a compliment in a House the Democrats already own. A whip’s job is to keep the caucus in line. Maryland FREE, which scores the business climate, put him at 22 percent in 2025, 23 percent the year before, 24 percent cumulative. That is the score of a man who votes with Adrienne Jones and Joseline Peña-Melnyk when the budget, the taxes, the energy bills, and the education formula come to the floor. He did not complete the Baltimore Sun’s pre-primary questionnaire. Incumbents who skip the paper are telling you they do not intend to explain the last seven years.

What those years produced is the Moore-Jones stack. The Blueprint that Harford cannot pay for. The energy policy that treats data centers and ratepayers as a morality play. The public-health branding — trafficking bills, Medicaid expansions, “minority health disparities” subcommittees — that lets a pharmacist from Aberdeen talk like a Montgomery County committee chair. None of that required a unique vote from District 34A. Any Democrat in that seat would have punched the same buttons. That is the point of a whip.

He will tell you about the pharmacy and the Guard and the auxiliary badge. Fine. Owning a drugstore does not make you a legislator. Serving as an unpaid auxiliary officer does not make you the public-safety vote Harford needs when Annapolis is softening juvenile charging and expanding expungement. Directing Aberdeen’s economic-development office does not make you the man who should keep writing the state budget that prices families out of the same town.

District 34A is not a safe Democratic lock because the people asked for two Democrats. It is a two-seat map that let Mary Ann Lisanti and then this pair hold the line while the rest of Harford sent Republicans. Steve Johnson is the second name on that pair. He is the one who could not clear a municipal residency board, could not win a primary on the first try, could not beat Glass without a statewide wave, and still will not fill out a newspaper questionnaire.

You get two votes in 34A. One of them does not have to be his.

Committee Name: Citizens for Teresa Reilly

Address: 2051 Whiteford Road

Whiteford, MD 21160-

Website: TeresaReillyForDelegate.com

Teresa Reilly: The Neighbor Who Already Knows How to Represent District 35A

District 35A is two counties, two seats, and one job that does not get easier when Annapolis is running the other way. Teresa E. Reilly has been doing that job since January 2015. She lives in Whiteford. She represents Harford and Cecil. She chairs the Harford County House delegation. She is Deputy Minority Whip. And she is asking the same voters who sent her three times already to send her back.

That is not a slogan. That is a record.

Reilly was born in Ohio on June 26, 1958, and finished Kenwood Senior High School in Essex in 1976. She worked as a bank officer. She sat on the board of the Republican Club of Harford County. She served on the Harford County Republican Central Committee from 2002 to 2014 and was its vice chair. From 2008 to 2014 she was chief of staff to the late Delegate H. Wayne Norman Jr. She learned the district the hard way — in living rooms, at farm tables, and in the office of a man who already knew how to fight for northern Harford and Cecil.

Voters put her in the House in 2014. They kept her there in 2018 and 2022. After redistricting she represents District 35A with Delegate Mike Griffith. In 2022 the two Republicans carried the two-seat district with Griffith at 53.3 percent and Reilly at 44.4 percent. Write-ins took the rest. No Democrat even finished on the ballot.

The résumé in Annapolis matches the résumé at home. Reilly sits on Health and Government Operations — health facilities, long-term care, public health, Medicaid, insurance, occupations, procurement. She serves on the Health Occupations and Long-Term Care subcommittee and the Public Health and Minority Health Disparities subcommittee. She sits on Rules and Executive Nominations. She is a member of the Maryland Veterans Caucus and the Maryland Military Installation Caucus. She serves on the Bainbridge Development Advisory Board, Cecil County’s local video lottery development council, the Commission on Trauma-Informed Care, and the Port of Deposit State Historical Park stakeholder committee. That is not a tourist’s list. That is a working legislator’s list.

She is a Farm Bureau member, a Horse Council member, and an NRA member. She served on the Liriodendron Foundation board. She has been recognized for volunteer work that predates her first campaign — Helping Hands Across the County, Helping Up Mission, a Pachyderm Award from the Harford Republican Club, a voter-registration award from the Young Republicans, and the C. Kenneth Beattie Chairman’s Award from the Harford Central Committee. She is married to James Reilly. They have a daughter, Tiffany.

Why vote for her.

Because she already knows the counties she represents. Whiteford is not a campaign stop. It is home. Harford and Cecil are not abstractions. They are farms, small towns, transmission corridors, schools, and families who feel every bad Annapolis idea in the electric bill and the property tax.

Because she already knows the work. Six years as a delegate’s chief of staff is not an internship. Eleven years in the House is not a tryout. Chair of the Harford delegation is not a courtesy title. Deputy Minority Whip is not a participation trophy. When the majority writes a map, a mandate, or a utility rule that hurts this district, Reilly is one of the people who has to stand up, count votes, and explain to neighbors why the other side would not listen.

Because her priorities match the district. Lower taxes. Control spending. Fewer regulations. Protect life and liberty. Keep Maryland from becoming a worse place to run a business or raise a family. On energy she has been blunt: Maryland imported a crisis by chasing intermittent generation and retiring reliable plants. She has written and spoken for in-state generation — natural gas and small modular reactors — and against transmission schemes that cut through the district while the lights stay expensive. That is not theory on Route 1. That is the bill on the kitchen table.

Because District 35A is a two-seat district, and the other side filed two Democrats after the primary: Gregory V. Anderson and Michael A. Eckels Jr. Reilly and Griffith are the incumbents who already won this map. Voters who want a conservative pair in Annapolis do not have to invent a new team. They have one.

Because experience is not the enemy of reform. Reilly came up through the bank, the central committee, and Wayne Norman’s office. She did not arrive in 2015 with a press kit and a slogan. She arrived knowing how a bill dies, how a constituent call gets answered, and how a rural district gets ignored if nobody in the room is willing to keep saying no.

Harford and Cecil do not need another experiment. They need the delegate who already lives here, already serves here, and already knows what Annapolis will try next.

Teresa Reilly has been that delegate since 2015. District 35A can keep her there.

Committee Name: Citizens for Gregory Anderson

Address: 1311 Thomas Run Rd

Bel Air, MD 21015-1214

Phone: (410) 734-6100

Email: greg@gregformaryland.org

Website: http://GregForMaryland.org

Gregory V. Anderson: A Seat at Their Table, Not Yours

District 35A is two seats. They belong to Mike Griffith and Teresa Reilly. On November 3 the Democratic Party is asking Harford and northern Cecil to fire one or both of them and send Gregory V. Anderson of 1311 Thomas Run Road instead.

They should not.

Who he is

Anderson was born and raised in Harford County. He grew up in Abingdon and Bel Air, went to Churchville Presbyterian, graduated Bel Air High School, and still lives in that same house. His father served in Korea, used the G.I. Bill at Georgia Tech, and worked at Edgewood Arsenal. His mother worked for the Department of Defense. He studied music at the Peabody Conservatory and electrical engineering at West Virginia University, magna cum laude. Summers at Aberdeen Proving Ground. A decade at Hewlett-Packard writing lab software. Then a web-ordering company in the 1990s whose technology IBM later acquired. Today he works with entrepreneurs. He plays piano and viola, has conducted community operas, and serves as a Harford County election judge. He has a daughter, a grandson, and a border collie named Bodhi.

That is a life. It is not a legislative record.

He has never held elected office. He has never sat on a county council, a planning board, a town commission, or a fire-company executive committee. He has never introduced a bill, never voted on a state budget, never sat through a 90-day session, and never been the person a farmer, a volunteer firefighter, or a small-town mayor calls when Annapolis writes another rule. The Baltimore Sun sent him the same pre-primary questionnaire it sent every other candidate in this district. He did not fill it out. League of Women Voters VOTE411 has a page for the race. His answers are not there. The NRA Political Victory Fund graded Griffith and Reilly an A. Anderson got a question mark. His running mate, Michael A. Eckels Jr., got an F.

How he got on the ballot

He filed February 20, 2026. Committee: Citizens for Gregory Anderson. Website: GregForMaryland.org. Phone on the State Board list: (410) 734-6100. On June 23 he finished first in a two-person Democratic primary, 3,335 votes to Eckels’s 3,276 — 50.45 percent to 49.55 percent. Statewide official total: 6,611 Democratic votes for two seats. Griffith, the same day, took 7,596 Republican primary votes. Reilly took 6,916. Michelle Christman took 3,636 and lost. In 2022 Griffith and Reilly combined for 97.65 percent of the general-election vote in this district against write-ins. That is the electorate Anderson is asking to change its mind.

No one drafted him because he had already done the job. He filed because the line needed a D.

What he is actually selling

Open the campaign site. The pitch is not a farm bill, a tax cut, or a school. The pitch is surrender dressed as sophistication.

“We have an emergency,” it says. “We have no voice in Annapolis.” Griffith and Reilly “can’t chair a committee, can’t move a bill, can’t block any legislation they oppose. They show up. They vote no. It passes anyway.” That, Anderson writes, is “theater.” The fix is to hire a Democrat so District 35A can sit “at the Adults’ Table.” He will “work with them.” Because “that’s the only way our district gets a seat.”

Read that again. The argument is that a Republican who votes no is useless, so the district should send a Democrat who will vote yes. He is not promising to change Annapolis. He is promising to join it.

Maryland Democrats have run the General Assembly since 1920. They hold a veto-proof supermajority. They chair every committee. They write the maps, the budget, the energy rules, the gun statutes, and the school formulas. When a rural Republican votes no on a tax, a mandate, or a land-use bill, that vote is the record the district hired him to keep. Anderson calls that record a failure. His solution is to replace the no with a yes and call it representation.

Griffith posted the day Anderson filed that Democrats had put up “a far-left radical” against him and Reilly. Anderson’s site quotes the post and sniffs that Griffith had never met him. Fine. Voters do not need a handshake to know what a Democratic House vote does in 2026. It funds Moore. It funds Lierman’s books. It funds Brown’s lawsuits. It funds the same majority that treated Question 3 like a gift and treats rural Harford like a land bank.

Why you should not vote for him

Because “a seat at the table” in a Democratic House is not a seat for Churchville, Pylesville, Whiteford, Aberdeen’s edge, or the Cecil farms that share this district. It is a seat for the majority. The first time a budget, a data-center siting bill, a school-funding formula, or a gun restriction comes up, Anderson’s value to that majority will be his hand, not his viola.

Because skipping the Sun questionnaire is not independence. It is a candidate who wants the office without answering the district. Election judge is civic work. It is not a substitute for a platform.

Because forty years in software and a company IBM bought do not teach a man how to vote on the Agricultural Land Preservation Program, volunteer-fire funding, or the next round of development-envelope math. Those are votes Griffith and Reilly have already taken. Anderson has taken none.

Because District 35A already tried the experiment of sending people to Annapolis who would “work with” the majority. The majority took the work and kept the power. The district’s answer in 2022 was 25,988 for Griffith and 21,661 for Reilly. Write-ins got 1,147. That was not an accident. That was a two-county district that knows what a Democratic delegate does when the gavel is already in Democratic hands.

Because the emergency on his website is not that Griffith and Reilly lack committee gavels. The emergency is that Anderson wants you to believe a no vote is worthless, so you should mail in a yes. That is not representation. That is recruitment.

District 35A does not need a conductor for the majority’s orchestra. It needs the two votes it already has.

Committee Name: Friends of Jakob Jake Taylor

Address: PO Box 42

Bel Air ,MD 21014-

Phone: (410) 688-6981

Email: votejaketaylor@gmail.com

Jake Taylor: The Bel Air Son Already Doing the Work District 34B Needs

District 34B is Bel Air, Bel Air South, Emmorton, Creswell, and Abingdon. It is Main Street and the neighborhoods that grew around it. It is the open McComas seat. The Republican nominee asking for that seat is Jake Taylor, a lifelong greater Bel Air resident, sitting Town Commissioner, and a conservative who already votes the way this district talks.

That is not a promise written for November. That is a record written in Bel Air.

Who he is

Jake Taylor grew up walking downtown Bel Air with his family. He ran in and out of the shops that still give the town its character. He listened to Ronald Reagan and decided he was a conservative Republican before most people his age had decided what they believed. He graduated from Loyola Blakefield. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Loyola University Maryland.

He is not a transplant shopping for a district. His family has lived in Harford County since he was born. When he first ran for Bel Air Town Commissioner in 2023, he lived on Mapleview Drive, just west of Roland Place. He was twenty years old on election day. He won in a landslide. When he took office he became the youngest elected official in Harford County history. The Baltimore Sun put that fact in a headline. The town put him on the dais.

He has served on the Harford County Republican Central Committee since November 2022. He managed Christian Miele’s 2022 state Senate campaign. He has worked as a legislative aide in the Maryland General Assembly — including for State Senator Jason Gallion — helping constituents fight the same Annapolis maze he now wants to change from the inside. He works for a family-run Harford County small business. He has coached speech and debate at Loyola Blakefield and taught Sunday school. That is a young man who already showed up for other people before he asked the district to show up for him.

What he did in Bel Air

He ran for commissioner on three things: public safety, fiscal responsibility, and the small-town character of the place that raised him. He has kept the list short and kept the promises.

He has never voted to raise taxes or fees on Bel Air residents. Not once. He has balanced the town budget every year he has been on the board. He has fully funded the Bel Air Police Department and stood with local law enforcement while Annapolis spent a decade making it harder for officers to do the job. He opposed projects that did not fit the town. He helped pass legislation to stop overdevelopment instead of talking about it after the concrete was poured.

That is the difference between a résumé and a vote. Taylor already had to look neighbors in the eye after the meeting adjourned.

The primary he won

Susan K. McComas has held District 34B since 2003. She is not on this ballot. The Republican primary on June 23, 2026, was a real race. Taylor beat Sheariah Yousefi 2,250 to 2,094 — 51.8 percent to 48.2 percent. Official State Board of Elections totals. Four thousand three hundred forty-four Republican votes, and the district chose the commissioner who already had a record.

The general election on November 3 is Taylor against Democrat Anthony Lyon. Lyon is the Ohio operative who arrived in Bel Air to work a campaign and stayed to run for the seat. Taylor is the Bel Air kid who already holds office here.

Who stands with him

Delegate McComas endorsed him to succeed her: the principled leader Annapolis needs, the right choice to stand up against special interests and for this community. 

Congressman Andy Harris gave him a full endorsement: the strong conservative leader this Harford district needs in Annapolis. Former Governor Bob Ehrlich called him a next-generation conservative who will fight the progressive agenda and fight for the district’s values. The Maryland Freedom Caucus endorsed him as the proven conservative in the race — balanced budgets, no tax or fee hikes, legislation against overdevelopment, and a pledge to keep that fight in Annapolis.

Those are not courtesy quotes. They are the people who already know what the House looks like when the majority is writing the bills.

What he will take to Annapolis

Public safety. Restore the authority of officers and prosecutors to put violent criminals behind bars and keep them there. Restart cooperation that actually removes criminal illegal aliens — including the 287(g) work the General Assembly shut down. Fund the police the way he funded Bel Air’s department, not the way Annapolis lectures departments it will not back.

Affordability. Oppose tax and fee increases. Cut state spending instead of papering over a structural deficit with another round of costs on families. Make government live inside its means the way a town commission has to.

Energy. Annapolis shuttered reliable generation, inflated demand with mandates the grid cannot meet, and then acted surprised when the bill arrived. Taylor’s answer is supply: repeal the rules that kill in-state production, build natural-gas infrastructure, and put nuclear on the table instead of pretending weather-dependent power will keep the lights on in Bel Air South.

Local control. Development, data centers, high-density housing, solar arrays, and industrial uses belong to the community that has to live with them. He will not vote to let Annapolis pre-empt Bel Air, Abingdon, or Creswell. He has already voted that way at home.

Why vote for him

Because the district does not have to guess. He is twenty-three on Election Day. He has already been elected. He has already balanced budgets. He has already refused tax hikes. He has already funded police. He has already blocked the kind of growth that changes a town before the neighbors get a say.

Because District 34B is not an entry-level district for a consultant. It is a Harford district that still looks like a town and a set of neighborhoods, not a corridor waiting to be rezoned from Annapolis. Taylor grew up on that Main Street. He still works here. He still serves here.

Because the other choice is a recruited résumé. Taylor is the neighbor who already holds the gavel in Bel Air and already knows how a no vote feels when the room is full.

Because McComas, Harris, Ehrlich, and the Freedom Caucus did not endorse a slogan. They endorsed the young conservative who already did the local work and is ready to take that work ninety minutes down I-97.

District 34B can send a commissioner who already kept faith with Bel Air. Jake Taylor is asking for that vote.