Aruna Miller

Aruna Miller (née Katragadda; born November 6, 1964) is an American civil engineer and politician who is serving as the 10th lieutenant governor of Maryland since 2023.

Miller, a Democrat, is a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates representing Legislative District 15 in Montgomery County.

Miller was born on November 6, 1964, in Hyderabad, India, into a Telugu Hindu family.

Her family came to the United States when she was seven years old.

Along with her two siblings and parents, she lived in Poughkeepsie, New York, where IBM employed her father, Rao Katragadda, as a mechanical engineer.

She attended public schools in Upstate New York and Ballwin, Missouri.

Miller earned a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Miller worked as a transportation engineer for local governments in California, Virginia, and Hawaii.

She moved to Maryland in 1990, where she worked for the Montgomery County Department of Transportation.

She has overseen programs that advanced access to schools, employment centers, and community facilities that are safe for pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, and people with differing abilities.

Miller became a citizen of the United States in 2000 and voted in the 2000 United States presidential election for Vice President of the United States Al Gore.

She became frustrated with the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, and subsequently became involved with politics by volunteering to help other candidates get elected.

During the 2004 United States presidential election, she worked as a precinct-level volunteer for the Democratic Party and nominee John Kerry.

In 2006, Miller was appointed to serve as an at-large member of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee and served in that position until 2010.

After state delegate Craig L. Rice announced that he would run for the Montgomery County Council in 2010, activists in the Montgomery County Democratic Party called Miller to ask her to run.

She initially declined to run, but changed her mind after talking with her husband.

Miller won the election to represent District 15 in the Maryland House of Delegates, but assumed office a month early due to Rice's resignation to take office on the Montgomery County Council.

Miller received support from fellow members of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee, who voted to recommend that Governor Martin O'Malley appoint her to finish the last month of Rice's term.

Miller was the first Indian American woman to be elected to the Maryland Legislature.

In her first term (2010–2015), Miller served on the Ways and Means Committee and its Revenue, Transportation, and Education Subcommittees.

In 2012, Miller served as an at-large delegate to the Democratic National Convention, pledged to President Barack Obama.

In 2015, she retired from Montgomery County to devote her full attention to her service in the Maryland legislature.

In her second term (2015–2019), Miller served on the Appropriations Committee, where served as chair of the Oversight of Personnel Subcommittee, vice chair of the Transportation and Environment Subcommittee, and vice chair of the Capital Budget Subcommittee.

In May 2017, Miller told The Baltimore Sun that she would run for Congress in Maryland's 6th congressional district if John Delaney decided to pursue a campaign for governor.

On July 28, 2017, Miller announced her candidacy in the United States House of Representatives election to replace Delaney, who said he would not run for re-election to instead run for president in 2020.

Miller ran for Congress in 2018 to represent Maryland's 6th congressional district, and lost the Democratic primary to David Trone.

In December 2021, Wes Moore chose Miller as his running mate in the Democratic primary of the 2022 Maryland gubernatorial election.

They won the Democratic nomination on July 19, 2022, and defeated Republican nominee Dan Cox and his running mate Gordana Schifanelli on November 8, 2022.

Miller is the first South Asian woman elected lieutenant governor in the United States, as well as the first Asian American lieutenant governor and first immigrant to hold statewide office in Maryland, and the second female lieutenant governor after Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

In April 2018, Miller won a straw poll of Democratic activists in Western Maryland.

During the election, she was endorsed by the National Education Association, the Sierra Club, EMILY's List, 314 Action, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and then County Executive Ike Leggett, among others.

Despite having received the most individual donations out of her Democratic opponents, Miller was outspent in the primary 13:1 by David Trone, the largest self-funding congressional candidate in U.S. history, and lost the primary to Trone by 9.3%, with 30.7% of the vote compared to Trone's 40.0%, and consequently did not advance to the general election.

She won Montgomery County but this was the only voting district she won outright.

Had she been elected, Miller would have been the only woman in Maryland's congressional delegation.

In February 2019, Miller was named the new executive director of Indian American Impact.

In January 2021, Miller filed paperwork to run for Congress again had Trone decided against running for a third-term.

After Trone launched his re-election bid on May 7, Miller declined to comment on her 2022 plans.

In December 2021, Wes Moore selected Miller as his running mate in the Democratic primary of the 2022 Maryland gubernatorial election.

The Moore-Miller ticket won the Democratic primary election on July 19, 2022.

The ticket defeated Republican nominees Dan Cox and Gordana Schifanelli in the general election on November 8, 2022.