As Merrimack County Sheriff, Jason Gerhard says he wouldn’t hesitate to arrest IRS agents who “operate outside their authority.” And while he has no interest in resorting to violence, Gerhard is quick to point out that county sheriffs have the power to “raise a posse” of able-bodied men to enforce laws.

“If you believe one guy isn’t enough, then he can call his buddies up,” Gerhard said in an interview last week. “That’s the whole point of the sheriff.”

In 2017, while serving a 12-year prison sentence for aiding a Plainfield couple who refused to pay federal income tax, Gerhard wrote a 72-page treatise calling for a “multi-front offensive” against the federal government and mega-corporations. 

His run for county sheriff this year is a reflection of that plan.

County sheriffs, officially, have only four powers enshrined in state law: they may investigate crimes, arrest people, enforce civil orders, and serve criminal and civil processes.

Gerhard’s expansive view of how to wield those powers couldn’t be more different from that of his lone opponent in the Sept. 10 Republican primary, Frank Cassidy of Epsom.

“There’s things that don’t fall within our parameters that I’m not going to go out and do,” Cassidy said in an interview. “I’m not going to go after the feds because I don’t like the income tax.”

Cassidy, who left the Sheriff’s Office in 2023 after 21 years, is driven not by lofty philosophical values, but rather by a belief that his former boss, current Sheriff David Croft, is “unprofessional” in how he runs the office – a characterization that Croft, who is running for re-election unopposed in the Democratic primary, heavily disputes.

What do county sheriffs do – at least for now?

The position of county sheriff has its roots in ancient English law and has been enshrined in New Hampshire’s state constitution since 1784.

The Merrimack County Sheriff’s Office has five divisions – communications, court security, detective, transport, and civil – and is staffed by about 60 employees. The office has an operating budget of approximately $5.1 million, and takes in approximately $1.6 million in revenue, according to the county’s most recent budget document.

The office staffs the Merrimack County Superior Court and provides law enforcement support to the 27 municipalities in the county, among other responsibilities. Unlike in many states, the sheriff does not have jurisdiction over county jails in New Hampshire.

What are the candidates’ backgrounds?

Jason Gerhard

Gerhard grew up in Long Island, the son of a public school teacher. After his identical twin brother enlisted in the Army, Gerhard decided he wanted to join him, but he had to kill several months before the position he sought became available.

He enrolled at Suffolk Community College and began to research the Federal Reserve and federal income tax in an effort, he said, to understand the country he was about to serve.

While browsing the social media website MySpace one day, Gerhard learned about a couple who had holed up in their house after being charged and ultimately convicted of failing to pay federal income taxes.

Ed and Elaine Brown’s siege, which lasted nine months, became a symbol of resistance for anti-tax proponents, including a young Gerhard. The 21-year-old traveled up to Plainfield in support of their cause and – depending on whom you ask – supplied them with weapons.

(Gerhard, despite having served his sentence, remains cagey about exactly what he did that landed him in trouble. “It gets a little bit complicated. I don’t really want to go into a five-hour story,” he said when asked last week.)

“This young man has been misguided by the Browns, whose cause is not a legitimate cause,” a federal judge said during a pre-trial hearing in 2007.

But Gerhard believes otherwise.

While incarcerated in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, he read the Bible, novels by Ayn Rand, and Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom.” He says he feels called to fight “corrupt entities” and describes his political views as “libertarian adjacent.”

Gerhard, who works as a carpenter and rents his home, does not pay any taxes. He would not commit to paying local property taxes if he owned a house.

Despite railing against government over-reach, Gerhard believes elected office is the best place to accomplish his objectives.

“People have been programmed to believe that government can solve their problems,” Gerhard said. “It allows you to have the ear of people who you otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach.”

In 2022, he ran for and won a seat as a state representative for Northfield and a portion of Franklin. But he described serving in the State House as disillusioning.

He attempted, for example, to investigate COVID vaccine manufacturers, which he claims are producing “bio-weapons,” but Republican leadership refused to back him.

“I realized that the House of Representatives is not what it is intended to be,” Gerhard said at a Hooksett Republican Committee meeting last week.

He believes that the powers of the sheriff will allow him to accomplish what eluded him in the state legislature.

Frank Cassidy

At 17, Frank Cassidy, a Londonderry native, enlisted in the Marine Corps. After four years of active duty service in Hawaii, Korea, and elsewhere, Cassidy returned to New Hampshire and got a job as a correctional officer at the state prison in Concord, where he rose through the ranks.

In the 1990s, he also began working part-time as a police officer, first in Loudon and then in Epsom. In 1997, when an Epsom officer named Jeremy Charron was murdered while on the job, Cassidy took over his position full-time, quitting the prison job.

Cassidy worked in the Epsom and Pittsfield police departments for a total of five years, before he arrived at the Merrimack County Sheriff’s Office in 2002.

Over his first eight years in the department, he worked a range of positions, before he became an undercover officer in the Attorney General’s Drug Task Force in 2010.

For 13 years, he wore his hair long and let his beard go bushy as he worked drug cases across the state and at times federally, going by the alias “Bobby”.

In 2023, Cassidy left the department because he didn’t like how the current sheriff, David Croft, conducted his business.

“I think integrity needs to be brought back to that office,” Cassidy said.

Cassidy complained that when Croft became sheriff in 2020, he encouraged Cassidy to come into the county complex in Boscawen with greater frequency than he was comfortable due to his undercover status. But when Cassidy did come in, he said Croft wasn’t in his office.

Croft responded that he was “satisfied with the amount of times [Cassidy] came in” and said that his job “is to be out assisting my community,” rather than sitting behind a desk.

Cassidy also criticized Croft for failing to re-assign someone to his former role on the drug task force and for being slow to assist certain local police departments that were short-staffed.

Croft acknowledged that he hadn’t replaced Cassidy, but he said it was because the task force was currently being re-structured. He declined to go into specifics about how he staffs the local departments, except to say that Cassidy’s claim was untrue.

“I have no idea why he wants to start this mudslinging, which I refuse to engage in,” Croft said. “He and I had no bad relationship.”

What would each candidate do as sheriff?

Jason Gerhard

Gerhard plans to set up task forces to investigate wrongdoing in New Hampshire. One task force would look into the “authority of the IRS to extort Merrimack [County] residents who do not earn federal income;” another would look into county jails; a third might examine geoengineering. (Gerhard says there is evidence that harmful chemicals are being sprayed into the sky to curb climate change.)

Once the task forces complete their investigations, Gerhard plans to bring their reports to the county legislative delegation and call for an investigation in the State House.

“As sheriff, I believe you have the sword and the shield,” Gerhard said. “And I would like to work with our state government to investigate the problems that need to be investigated.”

As for the more traditional responsibilities of the county sheriff’s office, Gerhard said he will need about a month on the job before he proposes any reforms. While he lacks traditional law enforcement experience, he believes his 12 years living in federal prisons will bring a valuable perspective to the office.

“I understand the system and the pitfalls of it at a deeper level than a lot of the people who are professionals in the system,” he said.

Gerhard acknowledges his view of the sheriff’s office is unorthodox, but he views it as the right one.

“I think a lot of people look at the sheriff as the chief of police to the county, and I don’t think we should be looking at it that way,” Gerhard said. “I think we should be looking at it as somebody who’s outside the system but sees where the problems are.”

Frank Cassidy

The first thing Cassidy would do as sheriff would be to reinstate someone to his former position on the drug task force.

“Drugs have continued, if not worsened, and we have nobody local addressing this,” he said.

Cassidy also would prioritize ensuring the smallest police departments in the county are supported. He said he sees the sheriff’s office as a resource that all the municipalities in the county can use.

Within the department, he said he would prioritize creating a stable working environment for employees and leading by example.

“I’m not going to ask you to do something I myself am not going to do,” said Cassidy, who is currently working part-time as a patrol officer in Loudon.

Cassidy has no sweeping vision for the office, and he says that’s exactly how it should be.

Gerhard “has an agenda of his own,” Cassidy said. “It’s not about the people, and it’s not about the people of the [sheriff’s] office.”

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.