Kevin Bloom has never been a cop and doesn’t own a gun. But now, they want to be sheriff.
Bloom runs a music studio and works for an audio software company. They have no law enforcement background, and their campaign platform questions whether the regular duties of Vermont sheriffs are even necessary.
“This isn’t a law enforcement job,” Bloom said in an interview, pointing instead to the role’s administrative responsibilities.
In the Aug. 11 Democratic primary, Bloom is set to face current Chittenden County Sheriff Dan Gamelin.
In contrast to Bloom, Gamelin worked more than 40 years as a sheriff’s deputy before being elected to run the office in 2022.
In his first term in office, Gamelin has proudly grown his department’s size and income. He manages 22 full-time and nine part-time deputies. He said he’s bought 17 new police cruisers that cost about $70,000 a pop. Sheriffs get to pocket 5% of the money their office makes from contracts. And for Gamelin, he said that’s more than $50,000 annually from his economically thriving department.
Bloom accuses Gamelin of growing the department for his personal gain. If elected, the newcomer says they would instead pursue unpaid work for the public good.
Chittenden County voters are no strangers to progressive law enforcement officials. State’s Attorney Sarah George, the county’s top prosecutor, has garnered fans and skeptics alike for her progressive policies, such as opposition to cash bail.
But Bloom’s outsider bid may test the county’s appetite for outside-the-box thinking.
Take the candidates’ endorsements. Gamelin touts support from men in uniform, including former Vermont National Guard Adjutant Gen. Gregory Knight and Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux.
Bloom, meanwhile, celebrates their endorsement from Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Bill Cohen and a local juggling cyclist.
Even Bloom’s campaign slogan — “Stop evicting children!” — appears to reject a key tenet of a sheriff’s legal duties.
A sheriff’s daily work involves administrative police tasks like serving civil court notices, managing the office’s finances and leading a squad of deputies. Vermont law mandates that sheriffs carry out parts of the eviction process.
But to Bloom, change happens from inside the system.
“There’s so much potential in this office to be really useful for our community, but we’re just letting all this potential rot on the vine,” they said.
Who are the candidates?
Bloom’s not just a law enforcement outsider — their background could scarcely differ more from Gamelin’s.
Bloom grew up in Sherborn, Massachusetts, a suburb west of Boston. Their dad, who they said is estranged from them and does not financially support them, is the CEO of a prominent Boston finance firm.
Bloom, now 32, moved to Vermont to attend the University of Vermont, where they majored in creative writing, and has lived here for the last 15 years. Although they were born outside the state, they said they could never see themselves living anywhere else.
“The biggest mistake I ever made was not being born in Vermont,” Bloom said, only somewhat in jest.
On their campaign website, Bloom describes being a musician and writer who runs a music studio downtown “with razor thin margins.” Their day job is working full time for an audio software company based in the Queen City called Sound Toys, which creates tools for music production.
If Bloom is elected, they might be the first openly transgender sheriff in the United States.
Gamelin’s roots began close by. He grew up in Winooski, just a few blocks from a small dairy farm owned by his grandparents, where he’d go to milk the cows before school.
After high school, he studied criminal justice at Champlain College. He went on to join the Chittenden County Sheriff’s Department at age 23 as a deputy under then-Sheriff Kevin McLaughlin.
More than 40 years in that job led Gamelin to head the office’s civil division. In that role, he was responsible for serving subpoenas and court notices in divorce cases, small claims cases and landlord-tenant disputes.
When McLaughlin, who was sheriff for 36 years, decided not to run for reelection again, Gamelin stepped up. He ran for the office in 2022, and in an uncontested race won 98% of the vote in the general election.
Forty years on the job made the transition pretty seamless, said Gamelin, now 65.
That seamlessness rubbed Bloom the wrong way. They said they decided to run for sheriff because they believe the office has been uncontested for too long and occupied by people who are part of the “far right.”
Although Gamelin has always run as a Democrat, Bloom said they consider him part of the far right because they think some of Gamelin’s policies are “dehumanizing.” They specifically point to his decision not to provide rides for people when they’re released from prison.
Evictions
In an unconventional approach to a law enforcement campaign, Bloom has rallied supporters around the idea of eviction reform.
Despite sheriffs’ legal duties to carry out evictions, Bloom said they believe it’s within the job’s purview to try to reduce evictions because of the role the office plays in the process. They want to create a job program for people facing eviction for not paying rent, they said, and would still carry out evictions when ordered by a court.
Their plan is informed by the city’s struggles, but limited by state law.
Under Vermont law, if a judge decides that a tenant can be evicted, the judge can issue a mandate that the tenant vacate the property within 14 days. Sheriffs and their deputies are directed under state law to deliver those court orders to a tenant. And if the tenant doesn’t follow the order to move out, a sheriff can forcibly remove the person from the property.
Bloom thinks it’s the sheriff’s role to address evictions not only because of their administrative duties in the process, but also because they see the state’s housing and homelessness crises as the driving force behind crime.
During the pandemic years, the Burlington-area rental vacancy rate hit astonishing lows under 1%. That contributed to a housing crunch in the county, with renters scrounging for places to live amid the limited options — and landlords holding the upper hand in the market.
In 2023, Vermont property owners were on pace to file hundreds more eviction cases than in prepandemic years, with pronounced effects in Chittenden County, according to Seven Days.
Advocates say Vermont’s tight rental market has contributed to the state’s homelessness. In 2024, Vermont had the fourth-highest rate of homelessness in the country.
Bloom pointed out that more than 72% of evictions in the state are because of tenants not paying rent, according to Vermont Legal Aid. So they want to create a program that could help people facing eviction keep their housing and get a job.
The proposed program would start with a group of local businesses that need employees, Bloom said. If a tenant was facing eviction, the sheriff could get the person enrolled in the program, and an employer would front an amount of money, say $500, that the tenant owes the landlord.
The tenant would be able to keep their housing, pay off their debt to the employer through working and have a lasting job to pay rent, Bloom reasoned.
If someone were ordered to be evicted from their house, Bloom said they would carry out that court order and would connect the tenant with housing resources and social services.
“There’s not going to be a Vermont where we don’t do evictions, but we need to do them thoughtfully and consider the consequences,” Bloom said.
Bloom’s reformist vision would be a better fit for the Legislature, not law enforcement, Gamelin argues.
“I think Kevin Bloom, if he wants to change the laws on landlord-tenant stuff, he needs to be a legislator,” Gamelin said. “I think this office is the wrong place to do that.”
Although he carries out plenty of evictions — and was busy with them the morning of his interview with VTDigger — Gamelin said he considers them “the worst part of our job.” He makes sure to connect people he evicts to social services, he said, and at times has given tenants hugs.
While Bloom rallies supporters in favor of eviction reform, some of Chittenden County’s most prominent rental business owners are backing Gamelin’s campaign.
Campaign finance records show the sheriff received $1,000 from “Bissonette Properties,” which appears to refer to Bissonette Properties and Rental Management. Gamelin also received $1,000 from SWB LLC, which is named as a plaintiff in a handful of landlord-tenant disputes in court. He also received $1,000 from Handy’s Hotel and Rentals, $500 from “Salamin and Mountaha Handy’s Apartments” and $200 from Jim Handy.
That’s on top of smaller sums from other landlords and rental companies.
According to Gamelin, he and the Bissonettes and Handys were friends long before he became sheriff.
“They’re supporting me as a friend, not as an owner of an apartment complex or an apartment building,” he said, rejecting the notion of a conflict of interest. “The evictions that I do for the Bissonette properties or the Handys are directed to me by the court system, not by the Handys and not by the Bissonettes.”
Balancing the books
Sheriffs are responsible for generating the lion’s share of the funds to support their departments due to the limited money Vermont provides for county government.
Gamelin runs his office like a business, funding its operations through contracts. If the upgrades he’s brought to the department are any indication, that approach seems to be working.
When he started as sheriff, Gamelin hired eight new deputies, he said. He also got the whole staff new uniforms and body armor. Throughout his first term, he said, he has bought the office 17 cars — so now everyone has a car to take home.
Gamelin has largely funded upgrades through security contracts with a host of nearby businesses, which pay $90 an hour for a deputy.
Deputies, sometimes in plainclothes, stand watch to stop people from committing crimes, making arrests if necessary. Businesses including Barnes & Noble and Vermont Railway, plus affordable housing groups such as the Burlington Housing Authority and the Champlain Housing Trust, all work with Gamelin’s department.
As city officials have been criticized as not doing enough to deter crime in the Queen City, companies like Goldman Sachs have even paid for deputies to escort employees from their cars to their offices.
In part through these efforts, Gamelin boasts that since he started a unit to crack down on property crimes, his deputies have made 1,000 apprehensions.
The contracts haven’t just funded office upgrades — they’ve funded Gamelin’s pay. State law allows sheriffs to personally pocket up to 5% of the money their departments make from contracts, as long as the sum isn’t more than 50% of their salary.
Gamelin said he does take up to 50% of his salary, which adds up to about $58,000 a year. It’s a practice common among sheriffs across the state.
Bloom has criticized the practice as unethical. They want to take on unpaid public service work rather than security contracts.
Across the state, sheriffs no longer get paid to give rides to people who were just released from prison. That sometimes leaves people stranded in a rural area with few belongings or transportation options. Bloom said they’d restart the practice, which hasn’t been in place for years.
In a way, it makes sense for Bloom’s vision to involve alternatives to police work. After all, they don’t have a law enforcement certification, which is not required for the job.
That concerns Gamelin. His deputies made an arrest on Church Street recently, Gamelin said, and the sheriff should have the expertise to give those deputies advice.
“This office is a law enforcement office,” the sheriff said. “We make arrests.”
