Draft:Sonya Dunn

Sonya Dunn is an American businesswoman, publisher, author, filmmaker, producer, radio and television host. She is the chief executive officer of JEMH Enterprises, a company involved in media production and technology services. In 2020, she was invited to join the Short Films and Feature Animation branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Dunn is the Republican nominee in the 2026 Maryland Comptroller election, in which she is challenging incumbent Democratic comptroller Brooke Lierman.

Early life, education and family

Dunn earned a Bachelor of Arts in film, radio and television production, with a minor in business, from the University of Central Oklahoma; a Master of Arts in producing film, television and emerging media from American University; and a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Arts in procurement and acquisition management from Webster University. She is pursuing a Doctor of Business Administration in finance at Liberty University.

Dunn is the daughter of the Rev. Seaborn B. Carter, a retired African Methodist Episcopal pastor and social worker who founded the World Christian Association, and the Rev. Cora Lee Rex-Carter, a United Methodist pastor who became Oklahoma's first Black Diagonal Minister. Dunn is married to retired U.S. Air Force Major General Troy E. Dunn.

Career

Business and media

Dunn founded JEMH Enterprises LLC and serves as its chief executive officer. She operates JEMH Entertainment, a Washington, D.C., production company. The District of Columbia Office of Motion Picture and Television Development described The Bedroom as her directorial debut and that it screened at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Dunn produced the web series Sista Wives, which won a comedy web series award at LA WebFest in 2013, The Beat & Path: Walk of Shame, which received awards at DC Web Fest in 2015, and the television talk show SPED 101.

Publishing

Dunn was the publisher of MilitaryHomeLife Magazine, a publication focused on the military living, families, and community. She also wrote the books The Bedroom and under the pen name Imnada Suta Journey Through Psalms 119.

Radio and podcasts

Dunn produced and hosted MilitaryHomeLife Talk Radio and The Sonya Dunn Show, which aired on DC Radio. MilitaryHomeLife covered service members, veterans and their families. In 2026, she hosted Maryland Economy, a podcast about the state budget, taxes and public finance.

Community media and advocacy

In 2015, Dunn served as president and board chair of Arlington Independent Media, a nonprofit community-media organization that provides production training and facilities and operates public-access broadcasting services.

2026 comptroller campaign

Dunn filed for the Republican nomination on February 19, 2026, and was unopposed in the June 23 primary. She received 160,629 votes in the official primary results, equivalent to approximately 73.3 percent of the 219,150 Republican ballots cast statewide.

In an August interview with Spotlight on Maryland, Dunn criticized problems with the rollout of Maryland Tax Connect and proposed a centralized system to track grants from state agencies to nonprofit organizations. Asked whether she would audit and release an accounting of state funds sent to nonprofits, she proposed a public performance report. In an interview with WMDT, she called for an integrated financial management system and argued that a more competitive business tax climate could broaden Maryland's economic base.

Political positions

The positions below are drawn principally from Dunn's responses to the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County's 2026 general-election voters' guide and a candidate questionnaire published by The Baltimore Sun.

Public finance management

Dunn supports modernizing and integrating digital public-finance systems under the comptroller's authority, including systems that affect state, county, and local government finance. She would apply that approach through the comptroller's roles on the Board of Revenue Estimates, the Capital Debt Affordability Committee, the Maryland Board of Public Works and the Board of Trustees of the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System, with particular attention to revenue forecasting, state debt, capital commitments and long-term pension obligations.

She supports integrating tax-collection, payroll, and business-activity data to improve revenue forecasting while protecting confidential taxpayer information, along with a public dashboard showing state revenue, expenditures, payment recipients, and funded programs. Her plan calls for scenario-based forecasting, stress tests, published assumptions, and early warnings before major financial commitments. Dunn maintains that accessible financial information and responsive service would improve public trust, create public value, and return the office to a citizen-centered model.

State credit rating

Maryland received two significant credit warnings in consecutive years. Moody's downgraded the state's general-obligation bond rating from Aaa to Aa1 in May 2025. In May 2026, S&P Global Ratings retained Maryland's AAA rating but changed its outlook from stable to negative, citing structural-balance pressures.

Dunn supports treating credit ratings and outlook changes as early warnings of fiscal risk. She favors scenario-based revenue forecasting, long-term stress testing, disciplined debt and capital planning, protection of state reserves, and transparent reporting of long-term liabilities and federal-funding exposure. Through the comptroller's roles on the Board of Revenue Estimates, Capital Debt Affordability Committee, and Board of Public Works, she supports early corrective action before structural deficits or major debt commitments weaken debt affordability or increase borrowing costs.

Procurement

A 2025 review by the Maryland Office of Legislative Audits found that 42 state units with full or partial exemptions from state procurement law reported $8.5 billion in non-payroll operating expenditures in fiscal year 2024. The review identified gaps in written procurement policies, approval requirements, competitive-procurement provisions and public notice of contract awards.

Drawing on her background in procurement, Dunn supports stronger stewardship and oversight of state contracts and funding awards involving businesses and nonprofit organizations through the comptroller's seat on the Maryland Board of Public Works and participation on other state boards and councils responsible for public funds, including the Maryland Efficient Grant Application (MEGA) Council.

Dunn favors closer review of sole-source, expedited and emergency contracts, including original costs, contract modifications, vendor performance and measurable outcomes, to protect the state and taxpayers from cost overruns and scope creep. She also supports consistent standards and public reporting identifying funding recipients, amounts awarded, intended purposes and results.

Public finance technology

Dunn supports using modern public-finance technology to make state spending and performance easier to track. She supports fully integrating Maryland Tax Connect with the comptroller's customer-service operations so individual taxpayers, businesses, and tax professionals can file, pay, manage accounts, resolve cases, and receive consistent assistance through a single system.

To support state, county, and local public financial reporting, her proposals also include a public dashboard, updated daily or nearly daily, showing state revenue, expenditures, payment recipients, and funded programs, as well as integrated tax-collection, payroll, and business-activity data for revenue forecasting. She also supports stronger cybersecurity protections to safeguard confidential taxpayer information and defend state financial systems against evolving cyber threats. She supports a centralized system for tracking state grants to nonprofit organizations and public performance reports identifying recipients, funding amounts, intended purposes, and results.

Economic growth

Dunn identifies business out-migration, affordability, taxes, inflation, business formation and job creation as indicators of Maryland's economic performance. She argues that current tax policies, including the removal of tax credits and additional tax on high capital gains, increased excise fees, digital tax, and the 3 percent tax on certain information-technology and data services, create economic drag by discouraging investment, limiting capacity-building, and encouraging businesses and taxpayers to leave the state.

Dunn supports a more competitive and predictable tax climate, along with targeted investment in Maryland's existing growth industries, including the blue economy, agriculture, entertainment, technology, space and aerospace, and manufacturing. She supports measuring progress through publicly reported data on net migration, business formation and job creation.

Dunn has pledged to restore the annual Maryland State of the Economy report to provide legislators and local governments with regular economic and revenue information for planning and decision-making.

Fraud, abuse and waste

Dunn supports targeted audits to identify waste, duplication and ineffective spending, along with public reports showing completed audits and money recovered or saved. She favors using data analysis to focus tax enforcement on higher-risk areas while limiting burdens on compliant taxpayers and seeking accountability when audits identify fraud. Dunn supports stronger enforcement, improved internal controls and public tracking of corrective actions. She also supports dedicating additional resources to the comptroller's enforcement division and working more closely with law-enforcement agencies to recover public funds and investigate fraudulent or criminal activity.

A 2026 audit of the Comptroller's Compliance Division reported approximately $1.6 billion in outstanding individual income taxes and $731.1 million in outstanding business taxes subject to collection as of June 30, 2025. The audit also identified more than $600 million in delinquent individual and business tax balances affected by inactive accounts, missing liens or incomplete collection actions. Dunn pledges to improve operational oversight and customer service to address management gaps in the current Comptroller's Office.

Taxation

Dunn characterizes the 2025 tax-policy strategy—including an additional tax on high capital gains, a 3 percent tax on certain information-technology and data services, and reductions in selected tax-credit caps—as a short-term effort to help close Maryland's structural budget deficit. She has argued that some recent tax increases and reductions in tax credits could discourage investment in the state. Dunn supports repealing or restructuring provisions of the 2025 Budget Reconciliation and Financing Act that she considers underperforming and evaluating tax credits according to their economic results. She also supports better measurement of the gap between taxes owed and collected through integrated data and risk-based audits.

Selected works

Films

Work	Director	Writer	Producer
The Bedroom	Dunn	Dunn	Dunn
End of the World	Dunn	Dunn	Dunn
Moonshot	—	—	Dunn
Courting Lewis Baker	—	—	Dunn
Down Range for the Holidays	Dunn	Dunn	Dunn
SHARA	Dunn	Dunn	Dunn

Web series

Work	Creator	Director	Writer	Producer
Sista Wives	Dunn	Dunn	Dunn	Dunn
The Beat & Path: Walk of Shame	—	—	—	Dunn
Testify	Dunn	Dunn	Dunn	Dunn

Television shows

Work	Creator	Director	Writer	Producer
SPED 101	Dunn	—	Dunn	Dunn

External links

• Official campaign website
• Personal website
• JEMH Enterprises website