By Kashmira Konduparty
Abdun Nafey Matin, a 31-year-old mental health therapist, nonprofit leader and community advocate, is seeking the Democratic nomination in Maryland’s House of Delegates District 9B, a seat covering Ellicott City in Howard County. Matin immigrated to the United States from Pakistan in 2013 and spent more than a decade in community service before earning his therapy license.
As a first-generation immigrant, Matin has made immigrant rights and representation central to his campaign. “The United States was built by immigrants,” he said, adding that he would “fight for them.”
Beyond immigrant rights, Matin’s platform focuses on education, mental health care, housing affordability and support for small businesses — issues he says are among the most pressing challenges facing Maryland and District 9B. He faces incumbent Democratic Delegate Courtney Watson, who has held the District 9B seat since 2019, in the June 23 primary.
Matin sat down with The American Bazaar to discuss what is driving him from the therapy room to the ballot box — and what he plans to do if he wins.
The American Bazaar: Why did you decide to run for District 9B?
Abdun Matin: For us overall in the state of Maryland, one of the biggest issues is affordability — and we haven’t really addressed it for a very, very long time. Tax rates keep going up, but people are not able to afford food or housing. It’s super expensive here in my district, and all across the state.
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People are going paycheck to paycheck every month, looking at just survival now, not even being able to save.
I’ve been a social worker for a little over 10 years, working at nonprofits to make sure affordability stayed on the agenda. It was time to be at the table rather than just advocating from the outside — because many solutions get decided there, and a lot of our immigrant community especially gets left out of that conversation.
What is District 9B not getting from its current representation?
Rents used to be a lot lower than they were five years ago. And they keep increasing — not just at the inflation rate, even more. Developers and landlords are raising housing prices exponentially while people’s salaries are not increasing at the same rate.
Ten years ago, someone making over $100,000 could comfortably buy a home, buy a car and live well. Now anyone making over $100,000 is middle class. That really shows what hasn’t been done.
The poverty rate keeps going up within my district. When you see long lines at the food pantry in one of the wealthiest counties in Maryland, something is wrong. And we’re cutting disability funds while giving more subsidies to developers who are already making enough.
What’s the root cause of the housing crisis in Maryland, and what personal experiences pushed you toward running?
Housing affordability comes down to a shortage of homes. That shortage drives up prices, creating a monopoly. Since COVID, houses have been selling over asking price.
But we can’t just find land and start building — we also need to expand school capacity, libraries and community centers. Right now we’re giving the richest of the rich more money to keep doing the same thing, instead of actually helping the community. My approach is making sure we tax the rich and require that developers who want to build here fund those school expansions — not pull funding from the state.
As a social worker, I’ve worked every day with families struggling to make ends meet. Nonprofit staff earn middle-class or even lower-class salaries, sometimes volunteering extra hours just to keep people from slipping into homelessness. That’s when I decided we need leadership that works from within the community.
We have a huge population of immigrants here — Indian Americans, Pakistani Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans. Immigrants are not a minority in my district, and we haven’t been represented as such. Just recently, our campaign was attacked on Facebook — called a ‘parasite.’
Our community has been here two or three generations, sometimes more. The United States was built by immigrants, but they still look at anyone who looks brown as an outsider, even if they were born and went to school here.
Anti-Indian and anti-Asian hate has been on the rise. Is this a product of the current administration, or has it been building for years?
It’s a mixture of both. People — especially on the Republican side — have been feeling this way for a very, very long time. It was just pushed under the rug. The Trump administration said every bad thing they could about the immigrant community and about nations around the world, and that gave racists the ability to speak out the way they are now.
But we’ve seen this indirect racism for years. Someone wearing a turban, someone wearing a burqa, anyone who looks brown — they get put in the same category. People mix up Mexican with South Asian, or Sri Lankan with Bengali. And they will do everything to butcher the name. You can say Mamdani, you can say Abdun — it’s not that difficult. But they purposefully try to do that, to deny any dignity to immigrants.
We’ve also seen a rise of Hindu hatred within our community. I think Trump is one of the symptoms of what the problem is, and we haven’t truly addressed it.
How do you plan to support immigrant communities, and is there any specific legislation you are considering?
One of my biggest concerns is ICE. We pushed back against a facility being built near our district, but it’s still continuing even after all that pushback — even after the state tried to block them. You need to prevent the contract from being awarded in the first place, not react after the fact.
From day one, I’m going to establish an advisory council made up of people from immigrant communities, nonprofits and different parts of the district. It’s not going to be just about me winning — it’s about the community holding power. Every bill we present should have inclusive language covering immigrants and all their groups within the community.
There is almost no research on immigrants’ mental health. I want more scholarships available for our community. I also want to ensure any hate-bias incident is investigated by a genuinely inclusive group. And I want to push for our community’s holidays — Holi, Eid — to be actual school off days, not just exemptions that cause children to miss coursework while everyone else stays in class.
What challenges are you facing — fundraising, name recognition, going up against an established incumbent?
My fight is not against the incumbent. My challenge is with affordability, with the housing crisis, the health crisis, the mental health crisis and the immigrant crisis. That’s what we’re struggling for.
You can fundraise millions of dollars, but we’ve seen a lot of races won with less when volunteers show up, when voters show up. Most of my campaign staff are volunteers. Our website was built by a high school immigrant kid who did it for free because he wanted a brown person elected to office. Our social media is run by immigrants and high school students, also for free. Good people can substitute for money.
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Any memories you’d like to share of growing up in Maryland?
We moved throughout Maryland. There were some really amazing Holi events, some really good Eid gatherings — thousands of people showing up with every color and every flavor of food. That’s one of the things I’ve enjoyed most about this county.
Every third house here is an immigrant household. For years, people in our community have been saying somebody should run. I finally decided: let’s put my name in the hat and give it 100 percent. Not for the sake of name-building — that’s the wrong mentality. The second generation doesn’t want to just stay in the corner. They want to be in the mainstream, work with the community and work for the community.
Your campaign website mentions reallocation of state-managed funds from companies to human rights. Can you elaborate?
My campaign slogan is ‘New Tomorrow.’ When we give out funds, it should be about what we’re doing for our community. We want to divert pension funds back to state businesses — not overseas, not to fund wars. When there are potholes on the road, when school classes are shrinking, when food pantries are overwhelmed, that tells you the investment is not going to the right places.
Billions of our tax dollars are being spent in wars overseas. If we had the ability to choose where our tax money goes, we would always pick schools, we would always pick our community. I want to bring those funds back, put them into small businesses, grow our revenue and create more job opportunities.
If voters could remember only one reason to choose you over your opponent, what would it be?
I will fight for them. That’s it — as simple as that. My track record is as a social worker and community worker, not a politician. I don’t want to sit in an office and call myself a delegate and command people. I want to serve them.
When our politicians understand that being elected means serving the community, every policy becomes easier, every piece of legislation becomes easier. Because at the heart of it, it’s about moving our community toward something better.