Robert and Colleen gave me, Akbar Khan, permission to write this article, because I count Arinze among my good friends.
I sat at “More Than Java” café in Savage Mill waiting for Arinze to meet me. I had arrived early, as I do everywhere. So, my mind wandered to unknown, unimportant places.
And then someone important came in: Arinze Ifekauche, Democratic candidate for the Howard County Council in District 2, leading up to the election on June 26th.
Arinze is so effortlessly elegant, and he has a kind, content face that immediately puts you at ease. His voice is soft but firm. For a split second, as he walked in, I felt like he was a Disney prince and we’d dance a pas-de-deux in the Savage Mill courtyard full of giant plants and sunlight.
Arinze isn’t a prince, at least not in the Disney sense. He has his feet planted firmly on the ground, and didn’t grow up with any exceptional privilege. He will always be to me, though. I worked with him at the Maryland Democratic Party Headquarters a couple years back. Being me, I was terribly intimidated by him. He has an aplomb and an ability to remain calm in the hectic atmosphere of local politics, which I don’t.
I was struck by this when we worked together in 2019. So, on the days I worked in comms—Tuesdays and Thursdays—when he was my boss, I felt shy around him.
Quiet But Not Quixotic
He was quiet. Very quiet. We did a photo shoot one day for the Democratic party website, with Arinze taking most of the pictures. It was like a party, we had so much fun, and Arinze was the host. In his gentle voice, he assigned me the job of putting all the pictures in an Excel spreadsheet by name. As I was doing so, he came up behind me: “Hey, Akbi.”
I jumped, because it had been an exhausting day, and I just wanted to go home.
“Don’t forget to put it on your resume that you know how to storyboard a photoshoot, OK?” He smiled.
“Uuhh…yeah, sure!”
It was one of those surprising encounters you have these days—too few and far between for sure—in which you remember that some people still do care. Not everyone in politics is a self-promoting careerist obsessed with their own ego.
Arinze does have one quality every political candidate or elected official I’ve ever met has: boundless energy. When he went over his resume with me—which he somehow rattled off on the spot, whereas I couldn’t tell you what I ate for breakfast this morning—I could not believe all the places his political career has taken him and all the different shapes it’s take.
Arinze (which is a Nigerian name, of the Igbo tribe) pulled up a chair next to me to explain how the software VAN (Voter Activation Network) worked. He wasn’t an unreasonable drill sergeant of a boss, and I’ve had a lot of those. Back in Annapolis at the Democratic Party headquarters, If we got our work done, which for me was working doing comms and targeted data on alternating days of the week, we could go home ten minutes early or half an hour or what have you. As long as we got our work done, again.
Arinze didn’t nickel and dime me or my colleagues who also worked for him.
Latinate Languages and Limitless Liveliness
As I write this article, it’s Sine Die (pronounced “sign-ee dye”) in the Maryland’s General Assembly. That’s the last day local senators and delegates have to get bills passed until the next legislative session, which will begin in January 2027. I could easily picture Arinze working to connect with his co-representatives there to get bill passed in the cavern of chaos that is Sine Die in the building that houses the general assembly’s chamber. The first time the late, great Delegate Frank Turner used that phrase in a conversation with me, I stopped him.
“Hold on–are you saying, ‘Sign or Die?,'” I asked, squinting at him at Bagel Bin in River Hill.
Related: Read All About My Speech with the late Delegate Frank Turner (D-13)
He laughed sweetly, because I was such a political neophyte, and take everything so literally. I had to laugh too. He explained it’s a Latin term meaning, “without a day.” Well, that’s menacing, I thought and still do, which I imagine it can be racing around Annapolis getting people to sign your bill as the clock ticks…until the next legislative session.
Perhaps Arinze will be a Senator or a Delegate one day, but while I was imagining that during our breakfast meeting, he took a quick sip of his green smoothie and excused himself to take a phone call from his campaign manager, Yianni Varonis.
Today, Arinze works at one of Governor Wes Moore’s coordinating offices in Crownsville.
“We are the specialized wing of the administration, so if the governor says, ‘Hey, I want to work on juvenile justice reform,’ we would be the convening agency that brings people together. We also do a lot of public safety funding, so our primary responsibility is a three-hundred-million-dollar grant portfolio.” He’s official title is “Communications Director and Deputy Legislative Director.”
Arinze graduated from the University of Alabama with a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Relations. He then got his Master’s Degree in Public Relations at Kent State University. Then, he got jobs working to promote Democrats running for various elected offices in Louisiana, Ohio, and finally, Maryland.
“I wrote the speech Marilyn Mosby delivered when she decided to press charges after the Freddie Gray murder,” Arinze told me, blocking his mouth as he chewed a breakfast sandwich. I wanted to tell him to move his hand, or the digital recording device I was using wouldn’t pick up his already soft voice. When I got home, I was relieved to find out his voice came through clear, gentle, yet eminently convincing…just like him.
Attention to Detail–and People
My breakfast buddy that day suddenly checked his phone for a meeting his was in, on Zoom or Google Meet, I assume. He politely asked me, again, to excuse him while he diverted his attention totally to the end of the meeting. I didn’t mind a bit, because when you’re with Arinze, you know from his intense gaze and erect spine, the way he looks at you straight in the eye, that you’re the most important thing to him in that moment.
He is very “in the moment,” overall, which is another trait you must have in politics. While the world feels like it’s falling apart these days—especially in the chaos wrought by the current president and his administration—Arinze told me he believes in putting up or shutting up.
“We’re all looking at our cell phones at Trump’s latest Truth or what Marjory Taylor Greene just did, and we can sit on the sidelines and whine about it—”
“Or we can…? I asked.
“I can use my experience to make things better. I’m looking forward to that when I’m on the County Council.” He said he is the person who he’d want to represent him on the council. And that is, someone who works in politics for a living, which Arinze does and has all his adult life. He’ll be 40 on May 14th of 2026.
He’s telling anybody who’ll listen that affordability and economic opportunities are the foundation of his campaign.
“Our [Howard County residents] economic growth has essentially flat-lined. It’s at about 3.5%, while it should be somewhere between 7 and 8%.” He told me how the “macro” machinations at the national level affect his and your hometown on a street with a funny name in Columbia.
He told me he’s aware of the endless news notifications on his phone, and I wanted to take a big, old nap as soon as he said that. I leaned to the side a little and rolled by eyes.
“Right,” he said, smiling, “But I couldn’t live with myself if I sat on the sidelines and whined about it and didn’t try to do something about it.”
“Well, all politics IS local, as the saying goes,” I said, perking up and sitting up again.
And: See Some of the Local Businesses That Stand to Benefit From Arinze’s Win
“Correct. The problems in our local economy are precipitated by macro issues,” Arinze said. “That’s why campaign is focused on how to grow our economy.”
He told me that whatever someone wants—school construction, better salaries for teachers, more libraries—none of it is possible unless the county has the funds to do it. It may sound obvious, but I hadn’t thought about it in a long time.
Having worked in all three levels—national, judicial, and local–of government, and having been responsible for huge amounts of money, Arinze knows this. He knows how to handle it, more to the point.
“We should be focused on how we can get businesses here, that everyone should be heard, that everyone should have an equal shot.”
I promise you, he wasn’t just telling me what I wanted to hear. He lives these ideals.
“My outlook, my work history, my track record—they all reflect,” his belief that Democratic/democratic politics should be a Big Tent.
I knew that, but I wanted to see if other regulars from the political scene did, too. So I asked three people who are seasoned HoCo politicos. Each of them declined to be quoted due to conflicts of interest. As flattered as I was that they knew people read my website. I was frustrated. Yet, I understood. But Arinze understands that and some more important stuff, too.
“If you want to changes things fast, go local. The speed at which you can do things, the raw power,” he said, getting excited but maintain his usual peaceful comportment is greater at the local level.
Notification Nation
We want to look at the endless notifications we all get on our phones about Trump’s latest cringeworthy act that brings down people like me (which is why I’ve declared myself to be on a news embargo this year—I refuse to follow the 24-news cycle…and yes, it’s because it makes me feel helpless) and “sit on the sidelines and whine about it.
“I couldn’t live with myself,” he said, if he let himself retreat from action in response to the constant “drip by drip” dismantling, of, say the economic opportunity his district was once famous for.
You meet a lot of people in local politics whose self-promotion—which they must do to win, I get it—knows no bounds.
Arinze, is one of a select few people I’ve met in my life as a Howard County politico, who is a friend above all else. His Campaign Manager, Yianni Varonis, has a similar view.
“Arinze is both a loyal person and a public servant—qualities that you look for in a candidate, but most importantly, friend,” Yianni, told me.
I agreed.
“I’ve had the privilege of calling Arinze my manager, my colleague, and for about a decade and a half, one of my closest friends. In that time, I’ve seen firsthand how much he cares about improving his community while working at the local, state, and federal levels of government.”
Yianni went on to tell me, in a text exchange, that someone who wants to get elected must have the following: solid values, necessary experience, and “…political savvy, coalition building, and—especially—high character.” That pretty much sums up what I wanted to say. But more eloquently.
A colleague of our from 2019 in Annapolis, Patrick Fowler, echoed this same sentiment.
“Arinze is one of the most talented leaders I have ever worked with, and to this day he remains one of my most trusted professional mentors,” he said.
I would have said a candidate needs the ability to compromise, in an effort to bring both sides of the aisle together. But I know Arinze isn’t one to back down from a stance he believes in just for a win.
He takes time to respond to text messages from me. It may sound small, but I hope you see it as the symbol it is. He cares about his friends. And he cares about the county.
Also: Another Committed Public Servant Is Dr. Scott Berkowitz, M.D.
I asked Arinze if he’d drive me to my car, which was in a parking lot not close to More Than Java. He was happy to.
It reminded me of one last question I had for him. I asked him if he felt nervous knocking on strangers’ doors as he canvassed. Canvassing is what wins elections, which still baffles me. I’m annoyed when someone rings my doorbell.
“Everywhere has been really cool. It’s a vibe,” he said, gently handling his car. As we arrived at my own car, he admitted that one place he felt trepidation was a mobile home park. There were a lot of “No Trespassing” signs, he said. I sighed, noting that I would be nervous in such a neighborhood. He surprised me, then, just as he did when he showed me he cared about my skills and documenting them on my resume back in Annapolis.
He said that as he looked at the names in the mobile home park and then talked to the people who lived there, he realized they were simply doing what they could to prevent ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) from raiding their homes.
A friend, as he is above all else, sees your anxieties and fears. Arinze does more than that: he comforts his friends–people, like me, Yianni, and Patrick. And he works hard to get things done!
Thanks for reading! Check back with us each here at rocoinhoco.com every week as Robert, Colleen (and pup, Moses) get to know the many facets—one each week–of this prismatic place called Howard County. They want to take you along with them, so follow us on Twitter at @rocoinhoco, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @rocoinhoco.