At least eight federal workers from Maryland who were fired, forced out or resigned during the Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal workforce are asking you for a new job: they want you to elect them to office.
Who better to run government, they say, than the people who really understand the nuts and bolts of it.
Maryland lost 29,200 federal jobs through April, one of the states hardest hit by the dismantling.
The candidates hail from the FBI, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Institutes of Health. They’ve represented America overseas as diplomats and on disaster response teams and aided in historic criminal investigations, including of President Donald Trump.
All eight former members of the civil workforce have filed as Democrats and say they’re primed to represent their communities, this time as politicians.
Voters will find them on the ballot competing for every level of office from Congress to school boards and races in between. Here’s a bit of each candidate’s story.
Dave Sundberg
Former federal job: FBI, Assistant director in charge, Washington Field Office
Running for: 5th Congressional District, U.S. House of Representatives
Dave Sundberg was part of a group of top FBI officials fired after Trump took office in 2025. He said he saw his fate soon after the November 2024 election.
Sundberg served as the assistant director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office and played a key role in investigations into Trump’s handling of classified documents and criminal activity committed during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“What hurt most was not losing my job,” he said, “It was not being able to still be there to protect the agency and the people in the agency from the political interference that was clearly coming.”
Now, he’s running for an open seat vacated by veteran lawmaker Rep. Steny Hoyer in Maryland’s 5th Congressional District.
Running for office wasn’t in the cards, at first. What pushed him into the race was hearing top federal law enforcement officials label Minnesota protester Renee Good a domestic terrorist after immigration agents fatally shot her.
He said the move shattered the public’s trust in law enforcement and defied long-established protocols.
“We just cannot have a federal government that is not accountable to the people,” he said.
Alexis Goldstein
Former federal job: Program manager, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Running for: 6th Congressional District, U.S. House of Representatives
Consumer protection watchdog Alexis Goldstein is used to taking on billionaires.
The cryptocurrency specialist said she was terminated from her dream job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after confronting members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Now, she’s taking on two of the state’s wealthiest people, U.S. Rep. April McClain Delaney and David Trone, to represent Maryland’s 6th Congressional District.
Goldstein jumped into the race because she was disappointed in McClain Delaney’s votes on crypto bills backed by President Donald Trump.
The consumer advocate wants to take her knowledge of government and financial systems to Washington.
The federal workforce, she said, has been “one of the biggest sources of resistance” to Trump.
“Who better to fight back against the administration than the people who directly know the loss of the benefits to the American people,” she said.
Chuck Borges
Former federal job: Chief data officer, Social Security Administration
Running for: Maryland State Senate, Legislative District 29
As chief data officer for the Social Security Administration, Chuck Borges was responsible for securing the personal data of every American, living or dead.
Borges blew the whistle last year after he discovered that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency employees were bypassing key security checks that kept data safe.
The former naval officer and decorated combat veteran reported his findings to oversight authorities after his attempts to report the threat internally were stymied.
He unwillingly left the job he loved in August because he was no longer able to carry out his duties, he said.
Borges realized he wasn’t yet done with public service. Communities would need ethical leaders like him, he said, for the country to recover from the status quo.
“As soon as I made that connection,” he said. “I realized it was my duty to run for office.”
Both party primaries are uncontested in June. That means Borges, of California, Maryland, in St. Mary’s County, will face off against Republican state Sen. Jack Bailey in November.
Teri Pailen
Former federal job: Grant supervisor, National Institutes of Health
Running for: Washington County Board of Commissioners
Teri Pailen, now retired from the National Institutes of Health, could see the writing on the wall as the Trump administration’s messages to federal workers arrived in her email inbox.
She recalled the “Fork in the Road” email and others asking civil servants to report what they did each week to Musk’s cost-cutting team.
Once she learned she would have to return to the Bethesda office after working remotely from home in Hagerstown, she left with her benefits intact rather than risk getting fired.
“I made the decision in one day,” she said.
Now the Democrat is running for one of five spots on the now all-Republican Washington County Board of Commissioners. The board has come under scrutiny for its handling of the Trump administration’s purchase of a Williamsport warehouse for use as an immigration detention center.
Pailen said the federal cuts have hurt people locally. She wants to help her neighbors get back on their feet.
Taking her shot, she said, “will help me feel better, to feel like I’m helping people. And even if I don’t win, I met a lot of nice people.”
Alicia Contreras-Donello
Former federal job: Foreign service officer, USAID
Running for: Maryland State House of Delegates, Montgomery County, District 14
Alicia Contreras-Donello is running for a state House of Delegates seat to represent Northeast Montgomery County after being fired from the USAID while serving as a diplomat in Libya.
The first-generation Mexican American said she wanted to continue to advocate for immigrants in her community.
Contreras-Donello was serving as second in command of USAID’s Libyan External Office when she and her colleagues were dismissed.
“I was crushed,” she said. “I felt disappointed and I was angry because I have spent pretty much my whole adulthood serving my country, and this is how I was repaid.”
She has represented the U.S. in El Salvador, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tanzania, working to expand democracy and stabilize countries, she said. Her agency was one of the hardest hit by the administration’s mass terminations, all but wiping out decades of soft power diplomacy across the globe.
She’s embarking on what’s next, but carries the grief of her firing and the loss of the critical work left behind by USAID’s dismantling. She also sees parallels between her old job and the job she’s seeking.
“What’s happening in our own country is the exact same thing we worked against in other countries,” she said.
Elma-Lorraine Diggs
Former federal job: Global health advisor, USAID
Running for: Montgomery County Public Schools Board of Education, District 5
Since losing her job as a global health advisor with USAID, Elma-Lorraine Diggs believes she has found a way to serve her community by running for Montgomery County school board in District 5.
The policy expert has aided crisis responses in Gaza, Haiti and Sudan, among others, and pursued the work because of her own lived experiences. Born in Liberia, Diggs was five when her family lost everything during a bloody civil war.
She said she “knows what it’s like when no one shows up.”
With time on her hands, she dove headfirst into volunteering at her kids’ school and hopes to apply her policy skill set on the board.
She’s still stunned by the “callous evilness” of the mass firings, but still believes in the mission.
“This is temporary, we’re not,“ she said. ”And so whether it’s with USAID, whether it’s with local politics, we are who we are, and we’re going to continue to do the work.”
Tracy Starr
Former federal job: Crisis operations officer, USAID
Running for: 5th Congressional District, U.S. House of Representatives
Tracy Starr learned she’d be lost from her dream job as a crisis operations officer with USAID in Africa four weeks after she started.
“To see it taken away that easily and that cruelly broke my heart,” she said.
Starr was a probationary federal employee, among those first cut, but had worked for years on government contracts.
She’s found renewed purpose in running for Congress, one of a wide field of Democratic primary candidates vying for Hoyer’s seat. Putting her name on the ballot was not just a “screw you” to the Trump administration, she said, but a vote for her government know-how.
“I know this, and it needs to be different in so many ways,” she said.
Allison Eriksen
Former federal job: Senior humanitarian assistance, disaster responder, USAID
Running for: Montgomery County Council, District 3
After Allison Eriksen was cut from USAID, she joined a group of about 20 federal workers who met at the U.S. Capitol every Tuesday to push lawmakers to fight for their jobs.
It was the way lawmakers dismissed civil servants that made Eriksen run for political office. The disaster responder with USAID spent Christmas 2023 in Kyiv away from her family and fearing for her life as the city took fire from Russian drones.
The lack of acknowledgement from members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, hurt her, she said.
“I had this kind of radicalizing moment where I said, ‘These people are not doing what they’re supposed to do,’” Eriksen said. “They’re not prioritizing the people they’re supposed to represent, and I think I could do a better job than that.”
She’s starting with a local County Council race to represent central Montgomery County in District 3.
Inside USAID, she turned taxpayer dollars into resources and delivered them where people needed them most, often under extreme circumstances.
“I’m who you want there in a crisis ... and man, conditions are not ideal right now,” she said.
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