Mia Love is on the cusp of becoming a household name. If she wins her congressional race for Utah’s fourth district, she’ll be the first black female Republican in Congress. And her speech at the convention yesterday — interrupted by chants of “USA! USA!” and “We built that!” — made her Google’s fastest-rising search term, according to the Hill. It helped her campaign with much-needed cash, too; her website reports that more than $125,000 poured into her campaign coffers afterwards, especially important given that her incumbent opponent has more than $1 million in his war chest.
“Fundraising is going great,” she told National Review Online today. “We always could use more. We’ve got a lot of groups that are coming in to help Jim Matheson because I pose a little bit of a threat.”
She credits her conservatism to her parents, immigrants from Haiti.
“They worked hard, they didn’t look to Washington,” she said. “When times got tough, they tightened their belts, they cut their spending, they lived within their means. And so those are the principles I grew up with, and I’m a product of that.”
And she told NR that female and minority Republicans often face heightened press scrutiny.
“Am I surprised by it?” she said. “No. I think that that’s exactly what the current administration fosters — they foster divisiveness. They’re trying to divide us based on social status, income level, and gender. And I think it’s time for us to say we’re not standing for it any longer.”