By MDBayNews Staff
BEL AIR, Md. — Harford County voters will find something unusual on their November ballot: a Democrat and a Republican running against each other in every single county council race, plus a contested race for county executive. In a county that hasn’t elected a Democratic county executive since 1994, that alone makes Harford worth watching this fall.
The top of the ticket: an intra-party fight settles first
County Executive Bob Cassilly, a Republican who has held the office since December 2022, is seeking a second term. Getting back on the ballot wasn’t simple for him. His Republican primary against sitting Council President Patrick Vincenti was, at bottom, a fight inside his own party, in a three-way field that also included Spencer Dagner. Maryland Matters described Vincenti’s entry into the race as the product of “a three-year intra-party feud between Harford County’s executive and county council.”
Vincenti, an 11-year council veteran, announced his campaign at his own backyard barbecue last September, framing it as a call for cooperation. “Harford County deserves a leader who is committed to working together with all of our community partners for the common good,” he said, as reported by WMAR-2 News, adding that the county had seen “a leadership that is unwilling to work with our partners.”
Voters sided with the incumbent decisively. Cassilly beat Vincenti roughly 60% to 35% in the June primary, a margin wide enough to settle the question of who leads the county’s Republican ticket this fall. It wasn’t Cassilly’s first time facing a fellow Republican for the top job, either. Billy Boniface, the former two-term council president now running for council president again, challenged Cassilly for county executive in the 2022 primary and lost by a wide margin, roughly 20,000 votes to 10,000.
The Democratic primary was a much closer call, and it produced a different nominee than it appeared to on election night. Barbara Osborn Kreamer, a former one-term Harford County Council member, state delegate and, more recently, clerk of the circuit court, edged Matthew Brown roughly 7,600 to 7,400 once mail-in and provisional ballots were counted, a swing from the four-vote Brown lead reported on primary night itself. Kreamer will face Cassilly in November. According to a Baltimore Sun candidate questionnaire, Kreamer, 77, previously served on the county council representing District E, in the House of Delegates for District 34, and most recently as clerk of the circuit court.
Cassilly enters the general election with a high-profile legislative win behind him, too. In June, he signed a bill prohibiting data centers as a permitted use in every zoning district in the county, making Harford the first Maryland county to adopt such a ban, after the County Council passed it unanimously. Cassilly framed the move as a defense of the county’s rural character and a response to the state’s strained power grid.
“We are protecting Harford’s wonderful quality of life for our families and for future generations,” Cassilly said after signing the bill into law.
A council where almost nobody currently holding a seat will be on the ballot
What makes this cycle distinctive isn’t just the party matchups. It’s how little of the sitting council will actually appear before voters in November. Of the seven council seats up for election, the presidency plus six districts, Nolanda Robert in District A is the only current officeholder who will be on the general-election ballot, and even she reached the council by appointment rather than election. Every other seat is open because the sitting member retired, ran for a different office, lost a primary, or was caught up in litigation that contributed to the sitting member withdrawing from the race.
“Of the seven council seats up for election, the presidency plus six districts, Nolanda Robert in District A is the only current officeholder who will be on the general-election ballot.”
Council President. Open. Vincenti gave up the seat to challenge Cassilly and lost. Republican Billy Boniface won a three-way primary over sitting District C Councilman Tony Giangiordano and Samuel Kahl. Boniface already served two terms as council president, from 2006 to 2014, was later the county’s director of administration, and has spent recent years as a top adviser first to former Executive Barry Glassman and then to Cassilly. He faces Democrat Mike Ciufo, who ran unopposed for his party’s nomination and is campaigning on reining in development, budget transparency and support for small businesses, according to his campaign material.
District A. Democratic incumbent Nolanda Robert, appointed to the seat last year after the council removed her predecessor, Dion Guthrie, from office, is defending it against Republican Jeffrey Beck, who ran unopposed. Guthrie tried to reclaim the seat in June’s primary and lost to Robert by more than 1,100 votes.
District B. Open, and by far the most tangled seat on the ballot. Republican Aaron Penman was removed from the council in February 2025 after a circuit court ruled that his day job as a Harford County sheriff’s deputy conflicted with his council seat under the county charter. The council seated Alison Imhoff in his place. Penman appealed, and the Appellate Court of Maryland ruled in April 2026 that he had been wrongfully removed; a circuit judge formally ordered him reinstated that June. But the appellate decision hadn’t arrived before the candidate withdrawal deadline, and Penman pulled out of the 2026 race rather than run while the case was still unresolved. By the time he got his seat back, Imhoff, the person he was replacing, had already lost her own primary bid to Stephanie Flasch in a three-way field that also included Russell English Jr. Neither Penman nor Imhoff will be on the November ballot. Flasch faces Democrat Isabela Dela Cruz, who ran unopposed.
“Neither Penman nor Imhoff will be on the November ballot.”
District C. Open. Giangiordano gave up the seat to run for council president and lost. Democrat Jessica Ryley Hammond, unopposed in her primary, faces Republican Paula Etting, who won a three-way primary over Charles “Chas” Hagan and Tim Murphy.
District D. Open. Incumbent James Reilly did not seek reelection. Democrat Jean Salvatore, unopposed in her primary, faces Republican John Carl Jr. It’s a bit of a rematch for Carl, who ran against Reilly in the 2022 Republican primary for the same seat and lost by just 11 votes.
District E. Open, in a way few saw coming. Incumbent Jessica Boyle-Tsottles lost her own Republican primary to Douglas Phillips by fewer than 350 votes. It’s a striking turnaround for Phillips, who finished a distant third in the 2022 primary for the same seat with just over 200 votes. He’ll face Democrat Hunter Baker, who ran unopposed.
District F. Open. Sitting Democratic Councilman Jacob Bennett, first elected in 2022, lost his own primary to Tamie Wainwright. She’ll face Republican Glen Glass, who ran unopposed.
Republicans have dominated Harford County at the countywide level, though Democrats have won individual council districts before, including Districts A and F in 2022. But between an unusually open field and a council president’s race that grew directly out of a Republican leadership dispute, the council seated in December is guaranteed to look and operate differently from the one voters have watched for the past four years, regardless of which party wins each seat.
Why it matters
Harford remains one of Maryland’s most reliably Republican counties at the top of the ticket. Cassilly won his first term in 2022 by roughly 28 points, and Republicans have held the county executive’s office since the 1998 election. That history is the backdrop against which this fall’s full slate of Democratic challengers should be read: a contested seat is not the same thing as a competitive one.
“A contested seat is not the same thing as a competitive one.”
What the data center fight showed, though, is that Harford’s Republican leadership isn’t simply rubber-stamping growth. Cassilly’s ban passed unanimously, putting the sitting council on the same side of a major land-use question even as several of its members were preparing to leave office or fighting to remain there. That fight, and the council turnover behind it, is likely to shape how this new council governs regardless of who wins in November.
“Cassilly’s ban passed unanimously, putting the sitting council on the same side of a major land-use question even as several of its members were preparing to leave office or fighting to remain there.”
What to Watch
Whether a council with only one returning member develops a different working relationship with Cassilly’s office than the outgoing one did, given how much of this cycle traces back to a Republican leadership dispute rather than a Democratic surge, and whether the county’s data center ban draws the legal or state-level challenge that advocates for the industry have suggested could be coming, though no such challenge had been filed as of this writing.
Sources: Maryland State Board of Elections 2026 general and primary election candidate lists and returns (elections.maryland.gov; msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/36loc/ha/elect); Wikipedia’s 2026 and 2022 Maryland county executive elections pages, cross-checked against official state returns; Maryland Association of Counties’ Conduit Street primary wrap-up and analysis (June 24, 2026); Maryland Matters coverage of Vincenti’s campaign launch and of the Penman/Imhoff District B litigation (multiple 2025-26 articles); WMAR-2 News and Fox Baltimore reporting on Vincenti’s announcement, as aggregated by Hoodline; a Yahoo News/Baltimore Sun report on Imhoff’s 2025 appointment; Fox45/WBFF Baltimore coverage of the Harford County executive primary and the data center ban signing; a Baltimore Sun candidate questionnaire on the county executive race; Mike Ciufo’s campaign profile via GoodParty.org; Maryland Manual On-Line biographical entries for Bob Cassilly, Billy Boniface, Barbara Osborn Kreamer and Jessica Boyle-Tsottles (msa.maryland.gov); and Patch and Conduit Street coverage of Harford County primary election results (June 24, 2026).
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