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Aruna Miller (D) defeated attorney Gordana Schifanelli (R) in the race to serve as Maryland’s lieutenant governor Tuesday, becoming the first-ever immigrant and Asian American elected statewide, the Associated Press reports.
Miller, who is Indian American and lives in Montgomery County, ran alongside Governor-elect Wes Moore (D), who also made history Tuesday as the first Black governor elected in Maryland.
Miller immigrated to the United States from India in 1972 and became a U.S. citizen in 2000. The 58-year-old pursued a career as a transportation planner and traffic engineer, working in the Montgomery County Department of Transportation for 25 years.
On the trail, Miller said she would work with running mate Moore to build more equitable transportation, including improving bus transit and considering discounted fare programs like those in Boston and Los Angeles.
“Transportation plays such a vital role in our economic health, public safety, equity, environment, and quality of life,” she said in a radio interview with WYPR in October.
Moore and Miller ran a center-left campaign, appealing to the state’s largely Democratic electorate, the Washington Post reports.
She has been outspoken about the need to bolster Medicare for All, protect the environment, and find a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Miller, who told NBC News in 2018 that she remembers tearing up after voting for the first time in 2000, pivoted to politics after watching Democratic presidential candidates repeatedly fail to win their races.
Asian Americans make up about 7% of the state’s electorate, according to the U.S. Census. In Miller’s home district of Montgomery County, that number increases to 16%.
She did come under scrutiny after The Intercept reported last month that Moore and Miller held a fundraiser with people linked to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist political ideology that has increasingly made its way into American politics. Their campaign said they “had not taken one dollar from the Hindutva.”
A former delegate in the Maryland House, Miller represented Montgomery County from 2011 to 2019, serving on the Appropriations and Ways and Means Committees, where she helped allocate state funds and oversee the budget. She was also a member of Maryland’s Legislative Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus.
She more recently served as a member of Maryland’s State Ethics Commission from 2019 to 2021.
In 2018, Miller ran for the U.S. House as a Democrat in the 6th congressional district but finished second in a crowded primary after trailing David Trone (D), who went on to win the general election.
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