A 36-year-old Utah mayor is seeking to become the first African-American Republican woman to be elected to Congress.
Mia Love, the mayor of Saratoga Springs, is the Republican daughter of Haitian immigrants. She is a staunch conservative who converted to Mormonism – and is challenging Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson, a six-term incumbent.
The race is considered at tossup,
The Wall Street Journal reports.
Love spoke at the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Tuesday night. Her speech drew sustained applause, The Journal reports, as she detailed her parents’ journey to the U.S. – arriving with only $10 in their pockets.
“The America I grew up knowing was centered in self-reliance and filled with the possibilities of living the American dream,” Love said, according to The Journal.
She added, in apparent references to civil-rights icons Rosa Parks and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Our story has been told over 200 years, with small steps and giant leaps, from a woman on a bus to a man with a dream.”
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