To borrow a phrase from our reality TV star turned president: “You’re Fired.”
That’s the message Bucks County voters gave to outgoing Sheriff Fred Harran Tuesday night when they elected Democrat Danny Ceisler to replace him. What’s more is that voter turnout locally was unprecedented for an off year election, clocking in at 49.6% according to the Bucks County Board of Elections. And voters overwhelmingly gave Ceisler the victory by a 10% margin, or more than 25,000 votes as of Wednesday morning. Ceisler’s election was part of what seems like a 50-foot “Blue Wave” that helped Democrats sweep county row offices and win scores of school board and municipal elections up and down the county, as well as elections across the country.
Sheriff Fred Harran had the deck stacked against him this election. He just didn’t know it.
First and foremost, Bucks County’s new 33-year-old top law man Danny Ceisler – an attorney, a former Army Intelligence Officer, and a public safety expert – was a formidable opponent. I’m not sure the 61-year-old Harran took him seriously enough.
Second, Harran was his own worst enemy. His hubris and insistence on partnering with ICE in many ways defined this election.
His obsession with working with ICE dates back to 2018 when he was Bensalem’s public safety officer. That’s when he tried to bring ICE’s 287(g) program to the municipality during Trump’s first term before it became so “popular” with today’s MAGA sheriffs across the country. In the end he had to abort the Bensalem mission because he claimed not enough people were familiar with the program. In reality, the opposite was true, which explains why there was so much widespread community outrage at the time – the real reason the ICE plan was put on ice.
But never underestimate the power of self-delusion.
ELECTION RESULTS: A Blue Wave in Bucks County as Democrats Sweep Row Offices, Dominate Races Across the County
Fast forward seven years later and Sheriff Harran, after Trump’s 2024 election victory, decided to run it back – but now on a countywide level. He enlisted almost as soon as he could, and signed up in March to participate in ICE’s most muscular partnership available – the “task force model.” This program, described as a “force multiplier,” empowers trained deputies to act as de facto ICE agents and “allows officers to challenge people on the street about their immigration status.”
To Harran, this is common sense law enforcement. At least that’s what he tried to sell to local voters. To others in the community though, it sounded like an open invitation to invite masked, armed, and largely unaccountable ICE agents to terrorize local immigrants or any people of color who presented as potential immigrants, no matter whether they were dropping kids off at school, visiting a sick relative in the hospital, or attending a court date. And you’d have to be living in a media ecosystem bubble of exclusively Fox News, Newsmax and the One America News Network to not see headline after video after photo of immigration agents tear gassing Halloween parades, repeatedly punching a restrained man in the head, or committing other human rights violations.
Nevertheless, Harran as an elected official would go on a right-wing podcast to call his critics and critics of ICE “lunatics” and “liars.”
Now Ceisler from the jump made it clear that turning over violent criminals here illegally from another country is something the Sheriff’s Office should absolutely do. But, and this was a very big and factual but, this 287(g) “task force model” was unnecessary to accomplish that, if not counterproductive.
“If we have someone in our custody who has been convicted of a violent crime and is in the country illegally, we should absolutely notify ICE,” Ceisler told me back in March. “You don’t need 287(g) to do that.”
Ceisler knocked on doors, went to community events – even protests, and shared his vision of what law enforcement could and should be in the sheriff’s department.
Ultimately, Bucks County voted for change.
