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Jeff Gahler
Profile
Republican
Address: PO BOX 1062
Bel Air, MD 21014-
Phone: (443) 876-8840
Email: jeffgahler@gmail.com
Website: www.gahlerforsheriff.com
Social: www.facebook.com/HarfordCountySheriff
@jeffgahler
Jeff Gahler: Twelve Years In, and the Job Keeps Getting Smaller
Jeffrey R. Gahler is asking Harford County for a fourth term as sheriff. He has held the office since December 2014. Before that he spent 28 years in the Maryland State Police, retiring as a captain after command assignments that included the Bel Air Barrack, Northern Troop, and the Automotive Safety Enforcement Division. He is a North Harford High graduate, holds degrees from Harford Community College and Johns Hopkins, lives in Forest Hill, and runs an agency of roughly 680 people with a budget north of $140 million.
That is the résumé. It is not thin. He lost to Democrat L. Jesse Bane in 2010, won in 2014, and was reelected in 2018 and 2022. In June he beat Keith Runk in the Republican primary, 17,248 to 8,851, and now faces Democrat Terrence Rogers in November.
He has real work on the board. Harford entered ICE’s 287(g) program in 2016. School resource deputies expanded. The office reports Part I crime down in calendar 2025 versus 2024: homicide 4 to 3, rape 34 to 32, robbery 22 to 20, aggravated assault 244 to 227, burglary 113 to 90, theft 1,302 to 1,051. Auto theft ticked up. Overdoses fell. Those numbers belong in any honest account.
So does the rest.
Gahler campaigns as the man who will be tough on crime. In 2026 the piece of crime people can see — the shootings — has gone the other way. The Baltimore Sun reported in August a slight rise in homicides and shootings in Harford while other Maryland jurisdictions were posting drops. This year already includes a New Year’s Edgewood shooting, an April Edgewood homicide that left Bryan H. Burrows Jr. dead, a July Fallston house-party shooting that killed one and critically wounded another, non-fatal shootings in Edgewood and Belcamp in August, a domestic shooting in Abingdon on September 1, and a deputy-involved shooting the same day. The annual report does not publish a clean “shootings” line. The incident log does. A sheriff who sold toughness does not get to treat that as someone else’s problem.
Then there is the other job he has been doing.
Since Bob Cassilly took office, Gahler has been in a running war with the county executive: budgets and “defund the police” talk in 2023, the Aberdeen precinct project, public-information fights that produced court orders against the administration, the Penman dual-role fight, the Fauver shooting settlement, a 911 dispatcher who stayed on the job after a DUI arrest, and a pile of press releases about who withheld which video. Cassilly calls it retaliatory politics. Gahler calls it transparency. Voters can pick a side. What they cannot pretend is that this is a side project. It has been years of letters, MPIA requests, ethics complaints, and cameras pointed at other Republicans. Keith Runk said the same thing in the primary: the practices can be fine and the banter still be the problem. Runk lost. The point did not.
A sheriff is allowed to fight Annapolis. Gahler has — on SROs, on sanctuary limits, on 287(g). He testified in Congress this month. That is advocacy. What Harford has also watched is an elected lawman who treats the county executive’s office as a second beat. Every hour spent proving Cassilly wrong is an hour not spent on the southern precincts where the gunfire keeps showing up.
Rogers is running on “public safety over politics.” That is a slogan. It is also the question. Gahler has the longest local law-enforcement command résumé on the ballot. He also has a three-year feud with another Republican and a 2026 shooting year that does not match the brochure. The county does not need a sheriff who is good at being a politician. It needs one who is good at being a sheriff.
The ballot is November 3. Read the record. Then decide whether twelve years in the chair still means the job comes first.
Terrence Rogers
Profile
Democrate
Committee Name: Citizens for Terrence Rogers
Address: 139 North Main Street, #202
Bel Air, MD 21014-
Phone: (410) 225-3400
Email: info@rogersformd.com
Website: www.rogersformd.com
Terrence Rogers: A Thin Badge Asking Harford to Trust the Slogans
Terrence Rogers wants the star. Not a council seat. Not a committee chair. The Harford County Sheriff’s Office — hundreds of deputies, a detention center, courthouse security, warrants, civil process, and the primary law-enforcement agency for most of this county.
He is 31 on Election Day. He has never run an agency. He has never been a sheriff, a chief, a colonel, or a commander of anything that looks like Harford’s Sheriff’s Office. He is the unopposed Democratic nominee because nobody else in his party filed. In June he collected 13,384 primary votes against an empty chair. In November he faces Jeffrey R. Gahler, the incumbent seeking a fourth term after twelve years as sheriff and twenty-eight years in the Maryland State Police before that.
Do not vote for him.
Who he is
Rogers tells a working-class story. Raised in a crowded household in Baltimore City. Maryland Army National Guard infantryman for six years. Patrol with the Maryland Transit Administration Police starting in 2019. Patrol with the Aberdeen Police Department starting in 2023 — about a year, by the public accounts. Senior pastor at Gethsemane Baptist Church in West Baltimore. Bachelor’s work at Alderson Broaddus. A Master of Divinity from Duke with a focus in prison studies. Doctoral work in “leadership and justice” at Union Theological Seminary in New York.
He lists Aberdeen as hometown and has lived in Abingdon for about four years. That is not a lifetime in Harford. That is a recent move and a short local badge.
The campaign committee is Citizens for Terrence Rogers, 139 North Main Street, #202, Bel Air. The website is rogersformd.com. Read it carefully. After the sheriff slogans, the donate block still talks about running for Delegate, working-class families, and giving “every neighborhood a voice in Annapolis.” A candidate who cannot keep his own site pointed at the office he is actually seeking is not ready to run a sheriff’s office.
He also filed for other 2026 races — Maryland’s 1st Congressional District and House of Delegates District 34B — and did not appear on those primary ballots. The pattern is not a long apprenticeship in one job. It is a man trying on offices until one sticks.
What he is selling
The platform is three bumper stickers.
Public safety over politics.
Protection with dignity — including for people in custody.
Prevention through proactive partnerships, because “we cannot arrest our way” to safety.
He calls it servant leadership. He talks about depoliticizing the office, accountable policing, community forums, youth mentorship, reentry, public reports, and a five-point plan he brands BRAVE. In The Baltimore Sun questionnaire he promised to appoint a legislative liaison so he would not have to deal with Annapolis himself. He said he would fully comply with Maryland’s ban on 287(g) agreements. He said Harford is already a safe county that “can and should be safer.” He said the incumbent “throws a tantrum” and burns bridges.
That is not a command philosophy. That is a seminar.
A sheriff in this county does not get to live in the language of prison studies and Union Theological Seminary. He gets midnight calls, a jail, a union, a budget, a county executive, a state’s attorney, municipal chiefs, and a public that expects the person with the star to have already done the job at scale. Rogers has done patrol. Patrol is honorable. Patrol is not sheriff.
The experience problem
Gahler’s record is not the subject of this piece. The question on the Democratic line is whether Rogers has earned the right to replace him.
He has not.
Six years in the Guard is service. It is not running a county law-enforcement agency. MTA Police is real work. It is not Harford patrol, Harford investigations, or Harford detention. A year in Aberdeen is a start. It is not a career. Pastoring a Baltimore church is a calling. It is not command of deputies who will serve papers in Dublin, sit a post at the courthouse in Bel Air, and work a shooting on Route 40.
He has never been elected. He has never been confirmed to anything. He has never had to live with a use-of-force review he signed, a jail incident on his watch, or a budget he had to defend in front of people who pay the tax bill. He talks about “culture change” as the biggest challenge of the job. That is what first-time candidates say when they do not yet know the machine they want to drive.
The slogans problem
Rogers says strong communities are built through service, not slogans. Then he campaigns almost entirely in slogans.
Servant leadership. Public safety over politics. Protection without partiality. Common-sense partnerships. Restore trust. Depoliticize the office.
None of that tells a parent in Edgewood what he does with a repeat violent offender. None of it tells a farmer in Jarrettsville how civil process will run. None of it tells a deputy what the standard is when the call is bad and the camera is rolling. “We cannot arrest our way to lasting public safety” is a phrase that sounds serious in a divinity-school paper. On a Saturday night in Harford it is an excuse waiting to happen.
He wants credit for being “not a politician.” He is on a party line, he ran unopposed because the Central Committee needed a name on the sheriff ballot, and he has already shopped two other offices this cycle. That is politics. Calling it ministry does not make it command.
Why you should not vote for him
The Sheriff of Harford County is not a community liaison with a larger parking space. The office is operational. It is legal. It is budgetary. It is personnel. It is the difference between a county that stays ahead of crime and a county that lectures itself about dignity while the calls stack up.
Rogers is 31. He has a short local police tour, a Baltimore pulpit, a prison-studies degree, and a website that still thinks he might be running for Annapolis. He offers Harford a tone. He does not offer Harford a record in the chair.
Unopposed in a primary is not a mandate. It is a vacancy the Democrats had to fill. Filling it with slogans does not make him ready.
Do not hand the star to a résumé this thin.
Vote no on Terrence Rogers for Harford County Sheriff on November 3.
