Teen in office? A 17-year-old is on the ballot for Maryland's primary election Tuesday
He may not be a legal adult yet, but a teenager who plans to start his freshman year of college this fall is on the Democratic primary ballots in Maryland.
Dhruvak Mirani, 17, is running for a volunteer position on the Howard County Democratic Central Committee in Maryland, where residents vote Tuesday in a quiet month for primaries as November's midterms inch closer.
The committee is a group of 20 volunteers elected by every Democrat in Howard County, located just southwest of Baltimore.
Democratic primary ballots in the county – population of roughly 328,000 – show Mirani's name for the position among gubernatorial, congressional and local legislative candidates.
"I’ve always been naturally drawn to public service, but over the past few years, I've continued to explore many different means of serving others," Mirani told Paste BN on Tuesday.
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If elected, Marini told Paste BN his job duties include fundraising for campaigns and recruiting and fundraising for candidates for office.
"Not many folks get to vote for themselves in their first election!" Mirani tweeted Tuesday during the state's primary.
According to his bio page, Mirani graduated from Glenelg High School where he was class president, the vice president and co-founder of his high school’s Young Democrats club, and co-captain of the school’s debate team. The teen also received a Baltimore region Princeton Prize in Race Relations Certificate of Accomplishment “for his work to advance racial equity in Howard County.”
In 2021, he won one of two nominations among a field of 13 candidates for Student Member of the Howard County Board of Education and ran "a bold, progressive campaign," meeting with hundreds of students.
Mirani, a student of color, said his campaign focuses on investing in the long-term future of Howard County.
He said the local Democratic Party "isn't doing enough" for the county's younger population.
"We can do that by working more closely with Young Democrats groups in our local high schools – many of these organizations don't have the resources they need to effectively get involved with civic engagement, he said. "(I want) to spend time hosting voter registration drives at schools to make sure that young voters are informed and engaged."
He also plans to push for holding routine town halls and forums – not just in election years – and push the Democratic Party to focus on "substantive education issues."
"Nobody should only hear from their elected officials once every two or four years, when they're desperate for votes and donations," he said. "We need to take on a more significant role in Board of Education elections, calling out dog whistles and standing firmly for common sense ideas such as inclusive classroom curricula. Young people suffer when folks try to pretend that education is apolitical."
Not the first teen
Mirani is not the first teenager to run in a state election.
Quirks in Vermont's election laws allowed an out-of-state teen to declare running for secretary of state in the August primary.
At age 14, Wyatt Pohlen, of Minnesota, filed as a Democratic challenger to incumbent Jim Condos, according to records from the Vermont Secretary of State's Office. Wyatt will not appear on the ballot for the Democratic primary on Aug. 9, 2022. according to his profile on the website Ballotpedia.
And in November 2020, a 17-year-old became the youngest elected official in Kentucky.
Landin Stadnyk ran unopposed for conservation district supervisor on the board of Scott County, 30 minutes north of Lexington.
It wasn't the first time Stadnyk ran for elected office either. In 2018, when he was 15 years old, Stadnyk ran for the same position and lost.
'Racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic vandalism'
Mirani said his journey to the ballot started when a group of graduating seniors spray-painted "racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic vandalism" around his high school.
The prank made national headlines and his peers eventually pleaded guilty to hate crime charges.
"That was frightening, and I wanted to do as much as possible to make our school a safer, more welcoming place for students like me."
So he began working to improve the school environment and increase student activism.
"I was elected class president as a student of color in a predominantly white school. I fought for justice in our education system, for example, becoming a fierce advocate for ending the school-to-prison pipeline by keeping armed police officers out of our schools."
"I owe it to students who are younger than me – and who are directly facing the consequences of political inaction on these issues – to stay in this fight. As the youngest candidate in Maryland, I believe I can confront the attacks on our students, create more substantive conversations about education, and connect with young people in a way that no other candidate can."
He plans to attend the University of Maryland this fall.
Natalie Neysa Alund covers trending news for Paste BN. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund.