This Freshman Democrat Loves Making Memes. But He’s Quickly Becoming The Butt Of The Joke In Congress.

Rep. Shri Thanedar’s rags-to-riches story and his willingness to poke fun at himself helped get him elected in Michigan. A year into his term, he faces accusations of a toxic work environment and the prospect of a tough 2024 primary.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Shri Thanedar took a sip of Diet Coke and settled back into a seat at his Capitol Hill office this month to continue discussing his first year in Congress. “People are seeing my work,” said Thanedar, a Michigan Democrat with an usually robust and dark head of hair for a 68-year-old and a smile that can verge on... intense. “They know my story; they know who I am.”

Thanedar’s presence in Congress is a testament to his story. Born into poverty in Chikodi, India, he worked as a janitor to support his family while putting himself through college before coming to the United States at age 24. By his early 50s, the triple-degreed scientist had become the millionaire owner of several chemical testing labs. Thanedar laid this all out in a 2004 memoir, “The Blue Suitcase,” that became a Marathi-language bestseller, an English-language book thanks to a suggestion from former President Bill Clinton and a self-produced play.

“I’m one of the few if not the only member [of Congress] who came to the United States as an adult,” Thanedar told HuffPost in a wide-ranging, nearly hourlong interview that his office had requested. “I don’t think like a multimillionaire. I think like a working-class person. I live like a working-class person. Deep down, that’s who I am. And my financial success later in life didn’t change me. My kids sometimes make fun of me because I go buy things in Walmart. But, you know, I really haven’t changed. I really understand the struggles of working people.”

No one disputes Thanedar’s rags-to-riches tale. But that’s not what people on Capitol Hill are actually learning about the representative from Michigan’s heavily Democratic 13th Congressional District. Instead, in just 11 months in office, Thanedar has gained a reputation for vanity in an institution powered by the stuff, burning through staff at a rapid clip, alienating his fellow members and spending taxpayer funds on what some people with knowledge of his office view as naked self-promotion.

The result is rampant questions about whether the working-class people Thanedar claims to represent — roughly one-fifth of his district’s families are below the poverty line — truly have an effective congressman and whether those families will choose to give Thanedar a second term in office.