Two local legislators have accused a candidate for Prince George’s County Council of misleading voters into believing they have endorsed him.
In an April 17 joint letter to Streetcar Suburbs Publishing, County Councilmember Tom Dernoga (District 1) and Maryland Delegate Mary Lehman (District 21) said quotations that Martin Mitchell posted on his campaign website imply they are supporting his candidacy.
Dernoga and Lehman have publicly endorsed one of Mitchell’s opponents, Michelle García, who has worked as Dernoga’s chief of staff for eight years.
“No, we have not endorsed Martin Mitchell for county council. But Martin Mitchell wants you to think so,” the pair wrote in the letter, which is published, in part, on the Streetcar Suburbs Publishing website. The organization publishes College Park Here & Now and The Laurel Independent, which cover two of the cities where District 1 voters live.
In an email to Streetcar Suburbs Publishing on April 24, Martin disputed the claims by Dernoga, who is not running for re-election after serving four terms on the council, from 2002 to 2010 and again from 2018 until now, and Lehman, who held the District 1 council seat from December 2010 to December 2018.
“The two incumbents who have held this seat for the last 24 straight years wrote a deceptive editorial alleging that I have wrongly claimed that they have endorsed my campaign,” Mitchell said in the email. “This is false. I have done no such thing.”
Mitchell said statements from the pair that he posted on his campaign website are “very true” and “only reflect their positive compliments about my more than a decade of public service. … None of that changes simply because they want their chosen candidate to take their place.”
The quotations appear in a section called “What People Say About Martin,” separate from a list labeled “Endorsed by.”
In their letter to the newspapers, Dernoga and Lehman acknowledged that they made positive comments about Mitchell when the candidate ran for and won a seat on the Laurel City Council in 2021. However, they said, he “lost a lot of support” during his campaign for Laurel mayor two years later after an article in The Laurel Independent revealed that Mitchell and his roommate had been accused of sexual assault. Both of them ultimately pled to misdemeanor second-degree assault when they were students at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in 2014.
“Mr. Mitchell believes that since we and others made positive statements about him five years ago, he may use those statements today to bolster his campaign by association,” Dernoga and Lehman wrote in their letter.
Mitchell countered that the statements were made three years ago, not five. “In fact,” Mitchell wrote, “Tom Dernoga himself was an enthusiastic endorser of my 2023 campaign for Laurel mayor.”
However, Dernoga told College Park Here & Now that he did not endorse Mitchell during his campaign for mayor. “I endorsed nobody for mayor,” he said. “I was staying out of it.”
When Dernoga and Lehman became aware, in April 2025, that Mitchell was still using quotes from them in his campaign materials, they said, they each “wrote to him immediately and requested that he cease using these statements to suggest that we were endorsing him.”
A flier that Mitchell circulated in April 2025 contains this quotation from Dernoga on the front: “I have been very impressed with Martin’s leadership. … He brings youthful energy mixed with government experience and a forward-looking agenda. This is an exciting time to be in Laurel, and Martin embodies the strong leadership and fresh approach that we need.”
In an email to Mitchell at the time, Dernoga wrote: “I cannot stop you from printing what you want, but you know it is misleading.” Dernoga also sent Mitchell a formal cease-and-desist letter in April 2025.
Mitchell announced his county council candidacy on March 29, 2025. The primary election is scheduled for June 23. Three candidates—Mitchell, García and Darwin Romero, a construction estimator and project manager—are running for the seat Dernoga is leaving.
As of April 24 of this year, Mitchell’s campaign website included the same quotation, alongside one from Lehman: “Martin embodies the very best of Prince George’s County’s next generation of leadership. He is an effective advocate for social and economic justice and a community leader with a passion for rolling up his sleeves and doing the hard work that is necessary to accomplish meaningful change. It’s a pleasure to collaborate with Martin on the priorities we share for Laurel, and I look forward to continuing our work together in the years to come.”
Those quotations are among a dozen from elected officials, including one from Joseline Peña-Melnyk, who has also endorsed García for county council.
Mitchell said Dernoga and Lehman are “running scared.”
“Why are these entrenched politicians attacking my candidacy, which, if successful, would make me the first African American ever elected to the District 1 seat?” he wrote in his email. “Because they’re afraid that I am going to win and they fear the change that I am going to bring.”