Ding-dong: Former progressive, anti-gay bigot, Sam Arora to retire from Maryland House

11/1/13 5:43pm by 48

You might remember Sam Arora.

He’s the former Hillary staffer, and former friend of many progressives here in DC, who ran for the Maryland House of Delegates a few years back on a platform that included vociferous support for gay marriage in Maryland.

Arora then turned around stabbed the gay community in the back after an odd 3 day period in which he went strangely silent.

Sam Arora

Sam Arora

Arora never was able to explain the bizarre flip-flop, and later tried to deny that he’d flip-flopped at all.

Arora’s hypocritical, and mysterious, sudden embrace of anti-gay bigotry not only raised more than a few eyebrows as to what really happened behind the scenes to get him to change his vote, but it also permanently severed the relationships Arora had built up over the years with the Democratic party in Maryland and in Washington, DC.

So perhaps today’s news that Arora is going to retire after this, his first term, is no great surprise.  Arora was expected to see some strong challengers, and strong opposition, in next June’s Democratic primary for his seat.

Fortunately for Marylanders, Sam’s queerly unexplained duplicity couldn’t stop marriage equality from coming in Maryland – it came.

Arora is married now.  To a woman.  Poor thing.  At least they can do each other’s eyebrows.

sam-arora-bugaski

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Follow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in New York City, and is the cofounder of TimeToResign.com. Bio, .

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  • Ninja0980

    I think there is one another explaination for what he did. And that is he never actually thought it would come close to passing.
    He could use the LGBT community to get $$$,use that to climb up the political ladders while lamenting the fact his bill failed,all the while secretly being against it.
    But when it became obvious it could pass,he backtracked. I honestly think he was a bigot all along,before his wife came into the picture but like so many other bigoted Democrats in the past,wanted to use the LGBT community to advance his career while figuring he could keep stalling.
    He thought wrong,better to have caught bigots and liars like him now versus later.

  • Ninja0980

    I hate it too but it’s life.
    I also think he used people and never dreamed he would actually have to vote on a gay marriage bill.
    Ah well,it’s over and done with,he’s finished in politics and good riddance.

  • MichaelS

    Had that experience myself. Shortly after my best friend from college got married, he told me he had to stop seeing me entirely because his wife was jealous and didn’t like him hanging out with his gay best friend (he was completely straight, btw, and the friendship never went there). But Karma was a real bitch… about five years later, after a complete communications blackout, he approached me because he needed my help — his wife left him, ran away out of state while taking EVERYTHING (all the property and the kids), was suing for divorce, and claimed he and I were having an affair. Hate when that happens…

  • MichaelS

    Hmmm… sounds like someone sent him some incriminating documents/photos that they threatened to make public if he ran again. Maybe a former lover? Trick? Hustler? Still hope the dirt comes out…

  • Strepsi

    I feel bad for her, maybe she is naïve and truly in love with Princess Aurora.

  • Strepsi

    I imagine your office as being something akin to Veep. And he’s Dan. Excep Dan is straight.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXBu4_jm27A

  • FunMe

    I like how pretty that lady looks to pretend to be married to that gay guy Sam Arora. (Closeted) I wonder if she is gay, too. Lesbian of couse. ;-)

  • Corey

    Um, the woman in the pic looks very insecure, just the type a closet case or scientologist uses as a beard…. I mean married because he truly loves her.

  • Chr477

    As in he’ll never work in this town again, blacklisted from politics retire.

  • Chr477

    Glad you held his feet to the fire on this one John.
    Hopefully his successor isn’t going to be so wishy washy on treating people equally.

  • Indigo

    I suspected as much. If he’s a climber, he’ll be baaack . . .

  • AnitaMann

    Interesting. I worked with this guy on the Kerry campaign in a field office in Wisconsin. He was just out of college, IIRC, and I didn’t interact with him much, but my only thought of him was, what a little overly ambitious (ruthless) climber with no goals beyond climbing up in politics.

  • Ninja0980

    Woudln’t surprised if that happens. I’ve seen people betray everyone and everything they’ve stood for after falling in love.
    I have to say though in the end,sooner or later those relationships blow up in your face.
    Someone that makes you change who you are or makes it either them or the people you represent,family etc will turn on you soon enough.
    And in my book,that’s karma.

  • sJames6621

    He may well be a closet case right wing xtian now

    BTW A black minister (Burns) very anti gay is retiring also. If you’ve seen him walk like I have, he’s go that funny walk like some gay people have – the forward foot comes down on the ball of the foot first not he heel

    Another well known closet case dem – very anti gay got outed somehow. Maybe someone is planning to out Burns also and he got told – out or else.

    BTW re Dwyer chief homophobe , drunk, boat crasher etc – here’s a part of his story –

    Turns out that an uncle of his was the 70th something victim of AiIDs back about 1980 One would think that he would be sympathetic to gay people but he’s an evangelist Presbyterian – the utter right wing church which did do the right thing – kicked him out of his church because he was exposing the church to criticism by its members.

    http://www.marylandjuice.com/2012/08/more-scandals-involving-del-don-dwyer.html

  • She is lovely, what nasty karma.

  • A waxing phenomenon.

  • Great, now that you mention that, I’m going to be seeing those eyebrows whenever I close my eyes. Thanks a lot!

    :)

  • FLL

    What in the wide world of sports is going on with those eyebrows?

  • FLL

    Hey, just one darn minute here. The density and pattern of his facial hair reveals that he has a natural unibrow, or close to it… which is now radically plucked almost farther than the inside corner of his eye?! WTF?

  • PeteWa

    hopefully they will have many loveless, sexless years together.

  • Thanks James.

  • Ayup.

  • vickif

    That was my first thought about why he changed. His fiance.

  • JamesR
  • JamesR

    Great to see ya here on such a GREAT subject – so much shitty news these days, so good to wake up to this! I toast you from NC.

    ALSO – so great to see your other posts here, I have read them but have been so busy in the Real World I haven’t been adding my 2¢ – not gone just busy, as you have been! THANKS

  • JamesR

    OMG he was questioned and questioned and questioned then raked and ridiculed for weeks on his Facebook page. I met some great people (real people) that way, countering the bullshit and extreme Bible abuse dished out by the mostly all sockpuppets who didn’t even bother to fake live in his district, the County or the State. We ended up all getting banned and all our comments scrubbed away after (someone) administering the page decided to do something. (He / they NEVER replied or addressed any of it.) Bi-zzzzare.

    (He was also questioned by media when and where they could, but Facebook is a the way people can be real people and speak directly. Or not.)

    However, my first two word reaction remains: Cragslist photos. Nothing dies on the interweb… We may be seeing more of Arora sometime but NEVER in political office thank God.

  • cc423

    This is not retiring. This is quitting… it’s what you do when you lose.

  • Monoceros Forth

    I like to think that Arora’s new Jesus-freak pals convinced him that if he turned his coat and came out against marriage equality it wouldn’t matter how much anger his treachery would inspire cos he’d borne aloft into the political heavens by the votes and support of the vast army of right-thinking God-fearing “values voters”–because, as we know, such “values voters” are the true majority, whatever the liberal media might say. It must have been an unpleasant shock to find out rather that he’d sold himself out to the losing side.

    So he’s going back to the private sector. Doing what, I wonder. My guess is he’ll surface as a spokesman or lobbyist for a right-wing astroturf group–you know, the kind that has “Citizens” in the name somewhere and uses words like “family” and “morality” in its mission statement.

  • ericxdc

    Montgomery County, Maryland has been forced to live with this stain of a politician representing us long enough. Each day is an embarrassment. His resigning is like the murderer who commits suicide the day before he’s convicted: I wanted the pleasure of kicking him out of office in defeat. But, glad he’s gone either way.

  • Stas

    this is a interesting game!
    http://codsa6.wix.com/ageofclones

  • Mighty

    What is his profession? Perhaps he was offered a cushy position somewhere for his vote?

  • olandp

    No, not buried and forgotten, forever remembered and vilified!

  • FLL

    Tell Mr. Arora not to spend all his fundamentalist Christian bribe money in one place.

  • Benicio

    I wonder if we will ever learn what really happened. It makes no sense. He continued to support the marriage bill for months after being elected. So it wasn’t a pre-planned bait and switch. He even cosponsored it. Then, all of a sudden, he goes silent and then tweets “Thinking and praying about the marriage bill” and then switches sides, deleting all of his previous pro-SSM tweets. And then he dodges calls and emails for weeks, never explaining what the is going on. One of his aides quit and then leaked to the press (possibly to this blog) that Arora was in private meetings with pastors and anti-SSM people, looking very happy and pleased and receiving applause in the closed door meetings. Absolutely bizarre.

    My theory is that it was his new fiance, whom he met in church. I can’t prove it, but a new influence in his life, a religious person, could account for the change.

  • Ninja0980

    He’s “retiring” because he would get beaten in a primary and everyone knows it,including him.
    Such a pity though,I wanted to see him get throughly humilated.

  • pappyvet

    Pity,a great dresser. So who is the queen in the suit. ;]

  • EdA

    Here’s a link to the article in the Blade:

    http://www.washingtonblade.com/2013/11/01/sam-arora-announces-will-seek-re-election/

    John is too kind to this snake by calling his departure as “retire.” From the article,

    “When my term of office concludes in January 2015, I plan to return full time to my work in the private sector,” state Del. Sam Arora (D-Montgomery County) said in an e-mail to supporters that Maryland Juice obtained.

    http://www.marylandjuice.com/2013/11/wow-delegate-sam-arora-has-decided-to.html

    Somehow, I don’t think that anyone would miss him if he steps down the day after tomorrow.’

  • pappyvet

    Anything for power. What a loser

  • Indigo

    “Retire.” Interesting word choice for such a young man. Don’t they usually say “to spend more time with my family” or “to explore other options”? And what was that three day turn-around about? Was he waterboarded into respectably homophobic rectitude? Or did maybe he got caught in flagrante fooling around delicto and blackmailed? Regardless, he’s gone until he comes back and I predict he will come back.

  • Good riddance is all I have to say.

  • ericxdc

    damn. He’s a liar, a traitor and political scum. And now he’s denying us the pleasure kicking him out of office.

    Not. Fair.

  • Aye, she does have that look, doesn’t she?

    And according to this WaPo story here, they met at church.

  • He was questioned frequently about it. Arora pulled the usual politician’s trick of ignoring the question and denying always that he’d flip-flopped.

  • emjayay

    In all this time was he never questioned about his flip flop on gay marriage? The Kos item from over a year ago had only speculation in the comments.

  • AngelaChanning

    He now denies us the pleasure of witnessing his primary loss. ;-)

  • nicho

    I can tell by the look on her face. She knows he’s gay — and she thinks she can change him. They probably met at one of those “pray the gay away” meetings. And as for his being out of sight, that’s what they said about Sarah Palin in November of 2008. Don’t count on it.

  • Butch1

    He knew better than to run again; the odds would have been too great of a loss and he would have had a lot of explaining to do. He had no answers.

  • ronbo

    R.I.P. May your name and actions be forever buried.

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