Mia Love Wins Nomination, Appears Headed To Congress

Mia Love easily won her party’s nomination to run for Congress at the Utah GOP convention on Saturday.

If elected from Utah’s 4th District in the Salt Lake City area in November, Love would become the first black Republican woman in Congress and the first African American representative from her state.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney won the district in 2012 by a landslide. “The good news for Love is that Mitt Romney won this district by some 37 percentage points. And since Democrats will not be running an entrenched incumbent again, the seat is certainly winnable, if not an easy Republican pickup.”

If she wins, Love will immediately become a star on the national political stage.

Love, the former mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, defeated her sole challenger with 78 percent of the vote at the convention. The margin of victory allowed her to bypass a primary.

In her first run for Congress in 2012, Love lost to six-term incumbent Democrat Jim Matheson by only 768 votes (0.31 percent). Perhaps seeing the handwriting on the wall, Matheson declined to run for reelection this time around. The Democrat nominee for the open seat in the US House is lawyer Doug Owens.

Love already has raised about $2 million for her general election campaign.

The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Love developed a national following in part after the inspirational speech that she gave at the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August 2012.

On her website, Mia Love explains that “As the mayor of my city I fought for fiscal discipline, limited government, and personal responsibility, and those are the same principles I will bring with me to Washington, D.C.”

In her acceptance speech on Saturday, Love vowed to take on the “goliaths of out-of-control spending, Obamacare, and that Godzilla we call the federal government.”

[image credit: Gage Skidmore]

Watch Mia Love’s speech at the national Republican convention:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfop5TeDnZo

Watch Mia Love’s speech at the Utah convention on Saturday: