The nomination of Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr.'s son for a District Court judgeship is prompting a vow of resignation from at least one member of the Anne Arundel County Judicial Nominating Commission and raising old questions of nepotism and political interference.
Thomas V. Miller III, a 12-year veteran of the Maryland Parole Commission, was passed over by the 13-member nominating commission in February when he applied for one of three vacant positions. But after Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, issued an executive order in April requiring all such panels to produce at least three nominations per vacancy, the commission voted Wednesday night to recommend Miller and four other previously rejected candidates for a spot on the bench.
"He would never have been treated seriously if he hadn't been Mike Miller's son," said Annapolis attorney Paula J. Peters, who told The Sun yesterday that she would resign from the commission because of the nomination, after serving more than two decades on the panel.
Peters said she had been lobbied by "political people" to vote in Miller's favor this week, but felt that his having only practiced law for four years disqualified him as a serious candidate for the bench. She declined to name those who had lobbied her on Miller's behalf.
In an interview, Miller, 41, said he has become accustomed to people second-guessing his qualifications and said he worried that suggestions of patronage would hurt his prospects for winning appointment from the governor.
"I know it's going to hurt my chances," Miller said. "I have nothing but respect for everyone that was on the commission. ... I thought my work over the last 12 years on the parole board shows them that I do have experience."
The Senate president, often called the most powerful Democrat in Maryland, angrily dismissed any suggestions of patronage as the work of "political enemies" and said yesterday that he has "never, ever" discussed his son's career ambitions with O'Malley.
"I feel like my son is being used here, and it's very unfortunate," he said. "He was a better scholar than myself in college, a better athlete. He's much more compassionate than myself, and he'll be a better judge than I would be."
Miller's appointment at the age of 29 to the Parole Commission in 1996 also raised eyebrows in Annapolis, where his father headed the political body that confirmed the selection. At the time, Miller, a 1992 graduate of the University of Baltimore Law School, was working at his father's law firm in Clinton.
