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The first Black woman elected to Congress as a Republican has died. Mia Love represented central Utah from 2015 to 2019. KUER's Sean Higgins reports on her life and career.
SEAN HIGGINS, BYLINE: The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Love was born in New York and raised in Connecticut. It was there, while in college, she met her husband who was on a Latter-Day Saint mission. They moved to Utah in the late '90s. Love's political career began in the small city of Saratoga Springs, Utah, where she became the first Black woman mayor in the state. During her first run for Congress in 2012, she described her politics this way.
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MIA LOVE: A lot of people have tried to put me in a box somewhere, and as everybody knows, I'm not easily put in a box. I hope that that message that I have of fiscal discipline, limited government, personal responsibility resonates from Tea Party all the way over to moderate.
HIGGINS: Utah Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, a close friend, said, while Love may have achieved many firsts, she never let them define her.
DEIDRE HENDERSON: She understood that she was breaking barriers and that she was first in a lot of those things, but she herself never leaned on that. So when people called her a rising star, it wasn't because she was a Black female Republican. It was because she was really talented.
HIGGINS: In Congress, Love was a reliable conservative vote and served on a House panel that investigated Planned Parenthood. In Congress, during President Trump's first term, Love did not shy away from criticizing him after he used an expletive to describe Haiti and developing countries in Africa. Love said the comments were racist and called on Trump to apologize. Here she is in the audiobook of her 2023 memoir.
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LOVE: To have a president of the United States of America who seemed incapable of having relationships, only convenient transactions, mock you after a tough election loss or call your ancestorial home a [expletive] can be devastating, disconcerting and disappointing.
HIGGINS: After leaving office in 2019, she worked as a political commentator at CNN. Love was first diagnosed with brain cancer in 2022 and publicly shared it a year later. Mia Love was 49 years old.
For NPR News, I'm Sean Higgins in Salt Lake City.
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