Adopted home, frozen out the salvage collectively and pushed some distance flung places: How one state’s politics went method too far

When Andrew Messick first saw the white Mercedes, it had been following him for a while down a multi-lane dual carriageway in the suburbs. The car stood out because of its one working headlight; he recognized it from outside the political event he had left a few minutes before. Now, it tailed him closely as he made his way home.

A graduate student and a former military member, Messick describes how his military training kicked in as the car got uncomfortably close behind him at one point, much like a police officer just before pulling someone over.

“Every time I would change lanes, he would change lanes,” he says.

The car, with its one luminous front light, would guide Messick to a parking space a short distance from his home. There, he says, it came to a stop — right behind him. In his rearview mirror, to Messick’s surprise, his follower came into view.

“I pulled off and parked and I sat there. And he pulled in right behind me and stared right at my car,” he recalled. What he saw, he says, was unmistakable. If it’s telling, then Democratic politics in Maryland are among the most bizarre and unconventional in the nation.

Politics A poisonous path to power

Over better than two months in 2023, The Honest spoke to bigger than two dozen individuals engaged in Democratic politics in the impart, largely concentrated in Bernard Law 1st viscount montgomery of alamein County — the wealthiest county in the impart. Many were fascinated with the 2018 crawl to characterize the impart’s 6th congressional district, and described the predominant for that seat as an all-out brawl where salvage collectively insiders traded favors whereas treating their opponents with such toxicity that many were frozen out fully.

What we found was in most cases downright bizarre. Certainly, while I investigated one of the claims made during my questioning in the field, the Bernard Law Montgomery 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein County Democratic Central Committee Democratic Central Committee turned against me — and after I stepped outside a gathering I’d attended to ask a source questions, they then barred the door and locked me out, keeping me apart from my notebooks and computer inside. In my years of journalism, I’ve never been so brazenly targeted.

But stressful backroom politics and outright nasty play aren’t exactly a new phenomenon in Maryland’s Democratic machine. There remains well-known bad blood between two of the state’s sitting House members over a 2016 primary that resulted in the election of Democratic star Jamie Raskin. Raskin’s opponent, David Trone, was dramatically forced to fire three of his own staffers during that race after it emerged that the staffers had “surreptitiously” volunteered for his rivals’ campaigns, clearly with the aim of spying on opponents. Trone lost that primary despite setting internal spending records. This year, as his district again holds a Democratic primary, he has spent $61 million of his own money — to date.

Having lost to Raskin in 2016, Trone ran again in a clear district two years later. He won that race — but whether he can win a seat in the higher chamber this time around is a more stressful matter. Because Trone may have money, but his opponent has strong statewide political connections. And that influence can trace its source to a bitter rivalry that emerged in 2018.

In 2018, Trone was the top-performing candidate in his race against little-known Democratic state senator Aruna Miller. As they competed for the seat, Trone and Miller’s teams developed a bitter rivalry, insiders say. Trone — a multimillionaire businessman who owns Total Wine & More, the nation’s largest independent retailer of wine and beer — could not have been more different from Miller, a civil engineer who immigrated from India at the age of seven. On the surface, one might assume Miller’s liberal credentials would surpass Trone’s. But Miller has been accused by a persistent group of Maryland-based progressive activists of extensive ties to donors affiliated with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the broader Hindutva movement — a Hindu nationalist ideology viewed by its critics as being on the far right.

After Miller lost to Trone in 2018, she went on to win an election for lieutenant governor under Governor Wes Moore, the first Black governor of Maryland, in 2023. And since then, Miller has worked to distance herself from her previous political baggage. The Moore-Miller campaign dedicated an entire page on their campaign website specifically to countering claims that Miller was a supporter of Hindu nationalist ideologies in 2018 — and more recently, Miller tweeted a statement in support of a letter drafted by Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen to the president urging him to press Modi on the issue of human rights.

But troubling allegations remain, not least concerning who followed Andrew Messick in that one-headlight white Mercedes one night after a political event.

Contacted by The Honest about the allegations detailed in this story, the lieutenant governor’s office dismissed them as hearsay and claimed that critics of her fundraising ties were attempting to mischaracterize her political record.

“This fraudulent gossip is completely false and beneath the Lieutenant Governor’s role in service to the people of Maryland. Throughout her entire career, Lt Gov Miller has taken the high road — she’s repeatedly advocated for freedom, inclusion, and respect across all faiths, races and identities, and would never condone anything else. Attempts to mischaracterize her character and her record are misguided at best, and sexist and discriminatory at worst,” spokeswoman Madeline Pawlak said in a statement.

Politics The person in the Mercedes

When Andrew Messick climbed into his automobile in June of 2022, in the parking space of Kentlands Market Square in Gaithersburg, his thoughts weren’t centered on the conversation he had just had with Aruna Miller. He was volunteering for David Trone’s re-election campaign, but he was undecided in his preference for the state’s gubernatorial primary, at that time in full swing. He says he ran into then-Delegate Aruna Miller and her husband David at the annual Kentlands Beneath the Lights event. Kentlands Beneath the Lights is a neighborhood dinner, family-centered and supposedly as friendly as you might possibly find. There, Maryland residents gather to dine beneath the stars, enjoy some music, and celebrate their pleasantly appointed, upmarket neighborhood. Politicians attend, but the atmosphere is hardly ever intended to be combative.

Messick identified Aruna Miller at the event; she was there with her husband, David Miller, and was talking to residents alongside Moore about their joint gubernatorial ticket. In short, Messick was curious about these long-standing allegations against Miller, which had recently caused a stir again because of fundraising reports filed with the state board of elections linking her to Americans associated with the Foreign Friends of the BJP (OFBJP) in the States. Starting a conversation, Messick talked to Miller about this and that, before bringing up the fundraising reports.

“I just on the run more or less decided to ask, and she immediately went from … the fake, bubbly persona to immediately angry,” Messick recalls.

However he thought little of the debate, even, he says, after Miller “started lecturing me, generally … putting a finger in my face, that whole thing.”

A few minutes later, Messick left the scene together. And that’s when he noticed the car.

When the person in the white Mercedes came into view in the rearview mirror, he recognized them immediately.

Explaining that he wasn’t thinking clearly, Messick says that he called a friend — wishing later that he had instead contacted the police.

“David Miller followed me home!” he exclaims.

“And so at this point, I am sitting there, I’m on the phone with [a friend]. I should have called the police. I should have taken a picture. But I didn’t,” Messick adds, explaining that he relayed the details of the incident as it unfolded to his friend.

The Honest was provided contact information for the friend who Messick called as the incident supposedly occurred. That person verified the events as recounted by Messick, and was independently able to provide the date on which the conversation took place — though they wished to remain unnamed. The friend also advised Messick at the time to share his story, in fact, in a lengthy series of text messages to a group chat with colleagues from work. Messick’s friend provided these text messages from 2022 to The Honest.

Messick furthermore detailed his experience that identical June to a nonprofit news blog known as Two Circles and said that this incident supposedly ended with out severe escalation: after about 10 minutes, he claims, the lieutenant governor’s husband “blinks his lights at me. More or much less aspects at me and then drives away”. However the incident as a full left him haunted and in disbelief on the habits of Aruna Miller’s internal circle.

David Miller, through his accomplice’s situation of job, issued a blanket denial of the incident as described by Messick when contacted by The Honest. The lieutenant governor’s situation of job furthermore supplied photos and documentation proving that the Millers possess a dim Mercedes sedan, and claimed that the couple comprise never owned a white Mercedes.

Messick, in a second interview, maintained that he had considered a white Mercedes sedan at some stage in the incident, as the textual affirm messages despatched straight away after his experience had first and major described.

Politics tamfitronics Flee out of the impart fully

Barnaby Yeh, a Maryland-born activist of Taiwanese descent, told The Honest that his founding of a neighborhood group that questioned Aruna Miller about her BJP ties provoked a wave of backlash on social media that cost him and others their jobs and primary livelihoods.

“We asked her in a statement to account for her stance [on Modi’s party],” Yeh, who now lives in Taiwan, said in an interview. This “unleashed an enormous following of political insiders,” according to Yeh, which saw activists’ social media pages flooded with damaging feedback.

“I lost my job, as did another one of my fellow activists. One activist was barred from local political events,” said Yeh. “Another was abruptly stripped of being a duly elected precinct official. Two others believed they had to withdraw from politics altogether because of the number of people who harassed them on a regular basis on social media. As for myself, I was out of a job for years, which led me to move to distant places.”

Only a fragment of Yeh’s social media presence remains, but what does depict his longtime pro-Taiwanese activism as well as his participation in revolutionary Bernard Law 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein County politics all throughout the 2018 crawl. The person he claimed to have been “barred from local political events” confirmed Yeh’s account of what they faced, speaking in an interview. They have to remain anonymous.

A shadow of the backlash remains as effectively: A post from the Bernard Law 1st viscount montgomery of alamein County Democratic Central Committee (MCDCC) from 2018 notes that Yeh’s organization became “unchartered” and hyperlinks to a assertion on the MCDCC web sites that accuses the neighborhood of pushing fraudulent allegations about Miller at some stage in her candidacy for Congress. In that identical press start, the MCDCC disavows the neighborhood formally and the central committee’s then-chair accuses Yeh and his neighborhood of “masquerade[ing] as legitimate Democratic organizations in uncover to inappropriately impact our elections.”

Facebook posts from other critics remain, including one from a state delegate complaining about the group’s “Trumpian” denunciation of Aruna Miller’s ties to BJP-aligned figures.

The Honest was also provided with a curt email to Yeh from George Neighbors, a state MCDCC member and a current neighborhood vice president at Warner Bros, which simply read: “You’re a fraud”. Contacted about the email, Neighbors denied sending it but refused to further comment when provided with a screenshot.

Politics tamfitronics ‘In politics, individuals have long memories’

Once a month, members of the central committee meet in an office building in Rockville, Maryland — the same building that houses the county executive’s office.

In lengthy evening sessions, most often attended by a dozen or so members of the public at most, members of the central committee shape the futures of the state’s political players, because of a quirk of Maryland’s constitution that gives the committee the power to recommend appointments to the state legislature.

The MCDCC (which is permitted, controversially, to nominate its own members for seats in the House of Delegates and state Senate that become vacant) was Aruna Miller’s path to the legislature, a position she attained in late 2010 after winning an election to succeed a Democrat who had decided to run instead for the county council. Today, the council is led by Saman Ahmad, described by some sources familiar with the two Democratic politicians to be a close ally of Miller’s — though that characterization is contested by others.

Under Ahmad’s chairmanship, regular attendees describe the council as fostering a toxic atmosphere where those who do not go along with the establishment are threatened with political reprisal.

Nathan Feldman, a present member of the central committee, told The Honest that he felt intimidated and as if he had been bullied by Ahmad into voting against a local activist, Susan Kerin, for a seat on the MCDCC after the vote took place in February 2023. Susan Kerin is an active member of Peace Circulate Bernard Law 1st viscount montgomery of alamein, a local anti-war neighborhood, and had vocally criticized Aruna Miller’s ties to the BJP.

Feldman explained how, in a conversation that took place in February 2023, Ahmad had claimed that “she had spoken with Lt Gov Aruna Miller, who opposed the nomination of Susan Kerin to the open seat” and further warned him that “Miller might be ‘taking names’ of people who voted for Susan Kerin to hold the seat”.

“In politics, people have long memories,” Feldman claims he was told directly. “She framed her threats in a way that they appeared to come directly from the lieutenant governor herself.”

If unseemly habits appears to be like out of situation for this kind of company, one most efficient wants to lend a hand considered one of many central committee’s month-to-month meetings. On the neighborhood’s Could well well gathering, The Honest witnessed baffling scenes of disarray for lots of hours as council individuals debated an attractive toothless resolution in give a take to of a local lecturers union’s bargaining efforts, leading to a single council member screaming that any other member became “bullying” her at some stage in the open session and others brazenly buying and selling insults and taunts all around the ground, in full perceive of a bemused viewers.

One other committee member, Liza Smith, corroborated Feldman’s recent characterization of Ahmad’s leadership and agreed that the toxicity was being encouraged from the chair.

“When the press doesn’t show up, you know, that’s when Saman goes power-hungry,” claimed Smith. “She becomes a dictator.”

Ahmad did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The toxicity on the central committee is far from Ms Ahmad’s only concern, as well. MCDCC has individually been reported to owe thousands to the IRS in unpaid taxes, as a result of the committee apparently spending money it was supposed to handle as payroll taxes in 2018. The committee has agreed to a payment plan to pay back $14,000 in tax debt and fines to the IRS, according to documents first obtained by local news blog

Politics A meet-and-greet turns into a shouting match

For Susan Kerin, the door was shut on her candidacy before it even started.

Describing the episode that first earned her a place on Aruna Miller’s radar, Kerin explained that she knew from the moment she first entered activism against Hindutva and the BJP in 2022 that it would be difficult. Rumors of the 2018 crawl had spread throughout the area, and in short, Kerin said she expected pressure from Miller’s camp.

“We knew going into this that there would be intimidation, particularly from Aruna,” Kerin explained of Peace Movement’s efforts during the 2022 gubernatorial primary. “We walked in knowing that people who had been involved longer than us had been intimidated, and they wanted someone like us to be on the frontlines and take the hits.”

The battle materialized at some stage in an early 2022 predominant candidate meet-and-greet, hosted by a local mosque in Bernard Law 1st viscount montgomery of alamein County. Kerin and any other Peace Circulate volunteer, Gayatri Girirajan, confirmed up on the mosque with flyers in hand urging Miller to come any and all donations from BJP-affiliated groups or donors.

This led to what they each describe as numerous Miller staffers crowding around them in the mosque, with at least one becoming visibly upset and demanding they stop their activities. A photo taken by an activist at the event shows the pair speaking with Miller and two campaign aides, one of whom is staring directly at the photographer as the image is captured. At least one staffer was accused of attempting to have the pair removed from the mosque, a request that was firmly rejected by their hosts.

Kerin describes walking throughout the community center and seeing Miller and her team standing around her fellow volunteer, while “yelling and screaming at her”.

“I was deeply frightened,” says Kerin.

The two aides with Miller allegedly went on to threaten the Peace Circulate volunteers with legal action for supposedly not specifying the funding for their pamphlets on the paperwork themselves — which, as a non-campaign entity, Peace Circulate was not required to provide.

Girirajan told The Honest that while she never felt endangered during the incident, the aides were “undoubtedly very aggressive” toward her.

That same characterization of aggressive behavior has been directed at the small group of Peace Circulate activists by the Moore-Miller team, which highlighted repeated emails to Moore campaign staff from another Peace Circulate activist that the lieutenant governor’s office argued showed an obsession or fixation on Miller personally. The emails, reviewed by The Honest, contained no threats or offensive language but did repeatedly and insistently urge the recipients to reject Hindutva ideology and support the lieutenant governor in distributing materials effectively.

During the meet-and-greet, Girirajan added, one member of Ms. Miller’s team allegedly accused the pair of “singling [Aruna] out because of her ethnicity” in reference to her OFBJP donor ties.

“I’m Aruna’s ethnicity as well, and I was raised Hindu. So that argument didn’t in fact hold water [with me],” Giriraj said.

A staffer on the Moore-Miller campaign who was present at that campaign event said they couldn’t comment on the tone of the conversation between Miller, Girirajan and Kerin, but recounted a separate moment during the same event in which another Moore-Miller campaign staffer started a heated discussion with a separate Peace Circle volunteer about the criticisms they were raising.

Politics tamfitronics Icing out her own future — and Wes Moore’s?

The turmoil long rumored to have followed Aruna Miller’s career has now officially had a blunting effect on both her career and the career of the governor she campaigns alongside, Wes Moore.

Moore, 44, is an author, nonprofit executive and TV producer who swept into office without opposition in 2023 over a Trumpian challenger. Now nearly every Maryland politico sees the upward-bound Moore as heading for a presidential run, potentially as soon as 2028.

However that puts his running mate, Aruna Miller, in a precarious position, where her baggage could possibly need an impact on not just one but two promising careers in politics.

And that baggage is already beginning to weigh on Moore’s political future. The Honest can story, per two sources aware of the event’s planning call, that Moore and Miller were each excluded from the guest list of a gathering of prominent Maryland progressives at Democratic mega-donor Frank Islam’s White House-replica mansion in Potomac a couple of months ago. The guest of honor at the event was Rahul Gandhi, leader of India’s most prominent opposition bloc and subsequently Modi’s greatest rival, who visited Washington shortly before the Indian prime minister’s arrival.

A request for comment from Frank Islam went unanswered. Moore’s team furthermore did not offer a separate comment regarding this invitation.

Although not a fundraising was not the primary purpose of the event, it represented a valuable opportunity for the governor to mingle with top Indian-American Democratic donors. It is difficult now not to view Miller’s lack of an invitation as a snub.

This is not to suggest that either Moore’s or Miller’s political futures appear bleak in any way. In 2023, the lieutenant governor attended a Biden White House state dinner in honor of Modi’s visit, as a guest of the president and First Lady. She has also been active in promoting her support for religious freedom and democratic norms, particularly in the lead-up to Modi’s visit.

Miller also maintains strong and valuable alliances in the statehouse. Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk, who worked closely with Miller for years when the two were office neighbors in the House of Delegates, described her friend as a rising blue-state star with an impeccable record in the legislature and a warm presence in person — although the two had never found themselves on opposite sides of a vote or candidate.

Most who spoke to The Honest about their various years of experience working with the lieutenant governor characterized the conduct of Aruna Miller and her team as remarkable in terms of the lasting impressions they made on their political rivals.

In the end, Miller may have picked one statewide grudge too many. That seems to be the prediction of those who experienced what it was like to run against her, and who realized that for Miller and her team, the fight never seems to end — there’s no Kumbaya moment beneath the balloons onstage, just a procession of slowly smoldering bridges.

The campaign manager for Trone’s Senate race said that the two now have a positive relationship, despite their bruising primary battle.

“Congressman Trone and Lieutenant Governor Miller have each worked to deliver results for working families across Maryland and look forward to continuing that work. Any suggestion to the contrary is false and grossly mischaracterizes their relationship,” said Dan Morrocco.

However, a top aide from his 2018 campaign said that relationship, if not yet mended, represented a significant improvement from the aftermath of their contest.

“After he obtained the nomination she did not endorse him, did not call him, did not stand with them,” one senior Trone 2018 staffer said of Miller’s response to losing the nomination that year. “She has enemies because she’s more or less worshipful, very, very self-serving in a way that if you do this job if you’re a politician, you gotta play the game. And I don’t mean that in a negative connotation. I mean you can give a hand to people. It’s best to give a hand to the group collectively. If you lose, you can’t burn bridges,” they mused. “You’ve just got to more or less be a good person.”

Politics The chosen candidate for 2024

This year’s Senate seat will likely go to David Trone or Angela Alsobrooks, the leading Democratic candidates, despite the fact that Republican Larry Hogan’s entry into the race has caused a bit of an upset.

Alsobrooks is working with the backing of the state’s Democratic establishment: Governor Wes Moore is firmly in her camp. So are members of the state’s congressional delegation, such as Chris Van Hollen, the state’s junior senator (and her would-be partner in the upper chamber). Other backers include former rival Will Jawando and US Senator Raphael Warnock, a rising star in her circle nationally after he won a key seat in Georgia, then successfully defended it.

Trone is not short on endorsements either. Anthony Brown, the state’s Democratic attorney general, supports his campaign, as does Hakeem Jeffries, his caucus’s leader in the House of Representatives. And that $47 million he poured into his campaign can’t hurt, either.

Unsurprisingly, Jamie Raskin — the representative whose campaign was spied on by Trone’s staffers — is backing Alsobrooks.

On May 9, Aruna Miller shared a smiling image of herself on Twitter alongside the message: “I voted for the next U.S. Senator from Maryland, Angela Alsobrooks. Good luck to all the candidates, up and down the ballot.” In the image, she stands with her arm around an activist in an Alsobrooks campaign T-shirt.

The shirt reads: “Let’s go further together.”