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But their similarities end there. The American Dream energized Miller, filling her with optimism. Schifanelli’s adopted nation has disappointed her at every turn, she said, leaving her wistful for the life depicted in the stories she watched on television as a girl.
Although the lieutenant governor is elected as part of a ticket, the office’s job description is thin. The lieutenant governor serves as acting governor when needed and chairs several state commissions, but otherwise has no formal responsibilities. If possible, the candidate is expected to add something to the ballot — whether it’s issue expertise, political acumen, professional experience or geographic balance.
Miller and Wes Moore, the Democratic candidate for governor, have used their center-left bona fides to excite Democrats — who far outnumber Republicans in this blue state — giving them a massive lead in polls and fundraising.
Schifanelli and Dan Cox, the Republican candidate for governor, won the nomination by espousing views that resonated with far-right Trump supporters. Cox beat a moderate protege of Gov. Larry Hogan (R) with the help of Schifanelli, who had drawn attention after a high-profile dispute with the former superintendent of her child’s rural school district.
Miller, a civil engineer, has legislative experience that Moore lacks. She served eight years as a state delegate, losing the 2018 primary for a congressional seat to David Trone. She says Moore wants her to focus on expanding public transportation in underserved communities, promoting STEM studies among girls and people of color, and mental health treatment.
“Wes Moore didn’t pick me just to be a shadow for him. He picked me to be a partner with him,” she said this month during a meeting of Democrats at Riderwood Village, a retirement community that spans Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.
Ann Klein, a former clinical social worker in the audience, asked how Miller would improve treatment of mental illness. Miller said she advocated for union workers fighting privatization of Western Maryland Hospital Center in Hagerstown, mistakenly calling it “Washington Hospital Health Center.” She repeated an often misquoted line from Martin Luther King Jr. and said she and Moore would gather experts to figure out solutions.
Klein said afterward: “It was vague. It’s like she was saying she doesn’t know what to do.”
Schifanelli, a first-time candidate, was born in Belgrade and raised largely by her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor.
Schifanelli’s said her grandmother’s determination and kindness influenced her, as did her support. Growing up in a communist society, she still was able to watch American TV shows such as “Little House on the Prairie” and “Dynasty.”
At night she attended an English-language school opened by the British Council; she holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Belgrade.
In 1998, Schifanelli met the American man who would later become her husband while he was assigned to Yugoslavia as part of a NATO peacekeeping mission. The next year she left the country during a bombing attack. She says she stuffed her diplomas in her backpack “because I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to prove to anyone my education, what I have in my head. Everything was in the diplomas.”
She worked as a financial adviser in the United States, had children and earned a degree from the University of Baltimore School of Law, then changed careers to become an attorney. But so much in the United States seemed out of step with her values, she said. Schifanelli was dismayed when she had to teach her dyslexic son cursive writing because his school in Queen Anne’s County said it was an obsolete skill. When she lamented that another son’s soccer team lost, she said the coach admonished her.
“You can’t tiptoe and be scared to say to first graders, ‘Hey, you lost the game,’ ” she said. “So they, what, feel hurt? Good. It’s a good thing. So next time you’re going to try again and win. … When they grow up and lose, they throw a fit. You have 35-year-olds who are insulted every time they don’t get their way. It’s bad for the nation. Of course, it starts in school.”
Identity politics will destroy the United States the way it destroyed Yugoslavia, she said, referring to the country’s breakup in the early 1990s that set off wars among ethnic Serbs, Croats and Muslims. She says she sees the same divisiveness in the United States.
In June 2020, as protests were erupting over the killing of George Floyd in police custody, Schifanelli took offense to a message that she and other parents received from Queen Anne’s County Schools Superintendent Andrea Kane.
Kane said systemic racism exists at all levels of society and that saying “Black Lives Matter” is not intended to disparage any race but to acknowledge the “disparate brutality and overt racism” experienced by Black people, including herself.
Schifanelli said she was alarmed that anti-racists and communists both use the revolutionary symbol of a clenched fist, a familiar image in her past.
“And of course my hair got in flames. My whole history of where I grew up: It just kind of hit me like rock in my face and it was like, ‘No fist!’ That’s like the communist symbol,” Schifanelli said.
She and other parents created Facebook groups to oppose Kane’s message and coronavirus protocols, inflaming culture wars in the conservative county. Her husband and a like-minded candidate ran for school board and won — Schifanelli managed their campaigns — and Kane left the county.
Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Center for Politics at Goucher College, said the Queen Anne’s County situation probably would be more problematic for the candidates if the race were closer.
“I don’t know how much it’s top-of-mind to a lot of voters,” she said. “Both Dan Cox’s record and her record haven’t been that scrutinized because they have been so behind in the polls.”
The Black Lives Matter dispute gained Schifanelli a national following on the far right. She has since spoken out on everything from critical race theory, which is not taught in the state’s K-12 schools, to standing for the national anthem. She says she doesn’t know if Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that “there is no LGBTQ kid in kindergarten or school. They are children. They don’t need to be bothered, ‘Are you this or are you that?’ ”
When Cox asked her to be his running mate, Schifanelli resisted at first — “I said, ‘No, I’m not working for the government. I hate the government,’ ” she said — but he explained she would be working for the people.
At a meeting in Rockville last month of the group United Against Racism in Education, she joked to the supporters that her campaign started like her life in the United States, “with no money,” and said she’s running to protect her children’s future.
“We are going to stop communism spreading through our great nation and through the state of Maryland,” Schifanelli said to applause. “We are going to have to fight hard for our children because no one else will.”
Miller’s family came to the United States soon after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which lifted racial quotas and ushered in programs that allowed her father to work in the United States. Raised by her grandmother in India, she was the last of her immediate family to arrive, at age 7.
“I was a stranger in a strange world,” she said.
At school in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Miller was the only Indian girl and “didn’t know a word of English.” When Miller — unaccustomed to the American diet — got ill from drinking cold milk for the first time, a classmate came to her front door with a stack of get-well paintings made by the other students. The simple gesture made her feel like she belonged and took her pain away “instantly,” she said.
“It was the educator in the classroom who taught every one of those students the importance of empathy for others. I believe that is the most important quality of a human being, especially when you get the great privilege of leading,” she said.
That lesson has run like a thread throughout her life, leading to her attending protests in D.C. and Germantown over police brutality. Social injustices, such as racism and health-care disparities in the wake of the pandemic, underscore the need for the government to step up, Miller says.
She was dismayed when Republicans took aim at critical race theory, a term that has become a catchall for any examination of systemic racism in education.
“There have been communities who have suffered for generations because of policies that have held them down, from our African American communities, Native Americans, the Chinese, the Japanese, Hispanics, LGBTQ. … You can love your country, you can love your state and you can still criticize it.”
Although Miller’s father never became a citizen, he loved John F. Kennedy and deeply believed in Democratic values, she said. But he suffered from bipolar disorder, which cost him his job, friends and dignity. “It all came crashing down,” just as she was getting ready to go to college, Miller said. A Pell Grant helped her pay for her bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri at Rolla.
“I have so much gratitude to this country, and that’s why I want to give back as a public servant,” she said.
The Maryland legislature abolished the role of lieutenant governor in 1867 and didn’t bring it back until more than a century later, when Gov. Spiro Agnew became Richard M. Nixon’s running mate, leaving the state in the lurch.
Current Gov. Larry Hogan (R) trusted Lt. Gov. Boyd K. Rutherford to take charge when he was battling cancer or needed someone to cover for him on the powerful Board of Public Works. Rutherford has also used his platform to lead an opioid task force, visit all 75 state parks and coordinate private investment in economically depressed communities.
Although the lieutenant governor role often is seen as a steppingstone to higher office, in Maryland only one became governor and none has been elected to the top job, said John T. Willis, executive in residence at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore.
But the state’s lieutenant governors often move on to high-profile roles. Michael Steele chaired the state GOP and the Republican National Committee. J. Joseph Curran Jr. ran for Maryland attorney general in 1986 and held the job for a record 20 years.
Most recently, former lieutenant governor Anthony G. Brown went on to win three terms in Congress after Larry Hogan defeated him in the 2014 governor’s race. Brown is now the favorite for state attorney general.
“The lieutenant governor role, if done correctly,” Kromer of Goucher College said, “can really be a partner in governance.”
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