News Americas, TAMPA, FL, Fri. Aug. 31, 2012: Given the Republican Party’s rhetoric on immigration and their largely focused right wing agenda, the last place you’d expect to find a child of Caribbean Americans is addressing the 2012 Republican National Convention, in Tampa Florida. Yet that’s exactly where we found a daughter of Haitian immigrants.
Haitian-American Mayor Mia Love, from Saratoga, Springs, Utah, was among those who addressed delegates at the convention that selected Mitt Romney, with a right wing stance on immigration reform, to be their Presidential candidate.
Despite the poor record of the GOP with reaching out to minority voters, Love, one of the few black speakers at the convention, choose to blame President Barack Obama for fracturing America.
She claimed the President is dividing people and believes Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will restore the American Dream. Love, a rising star in the GOP, told her own American Dream story about her parents who came to the United States from Haiti with just $10 in their pockets in 1973.
President Obama’s version of America is a divided one — pitting us against each other based on our income level, gender, and social status. His policies have failed! We are not better off than we were 4 years ago, and no rhetoric, bumper sticker, or campaign ad can change that.
“The America I came to know was centered in personal responsibility and filled with the American dream,” said Love. “It’s in every child who looks at the seemingly impossible and says, ‘I can do that.’ That is the America I know.”
Love’s race has been the subject of much attention, as she is the first black woman mayor in Utah history.
She was born Ludmya “Mia” Bourdeau in Brooklyn, New York in 1975 and was largely raised in Connecticut. After they moved to Connecticut, her parents brought her older siblings from Haiti.
Love graduated from the University of Hartford with a degree in Fine Arts and went on to work at Sento Corp. and the Ecopass Corporation. (RCS Sidebar: Love wants to cut Federal student financial aid but I would venture to say that her Fine Arts degree included some Federally funded financial aid!)
At her college orientation, Love’s father told her: “Mia, your mother and I never took a handout. You will not be a burden to society. You will give back.” She has said it is philosophy she underscores and uses it to sum up her conservative views.
In 1998, Mia moved to Utah and got to know Jason Love, whom she met when he was an LDS missionary in Connecticut, widely known as Mormon missionaries. Love joined the LDS Church, becoming a Mormon, and married Jason. They have three children.
In 2003, Love won a seat on the Saratoga Springs City Council, becoming the first female Haitian-American elected official in Utah County, Utah; she took office in January 2004.
After six years on the Council she was elected Mayor. Love is currently running in the 4th Congressional District, which was created after the 2010 Census. She faces competition from six-term Democrat Jim Matheson.
She has said that if elected to Congress, she would “join the Congressional Black Caucus and try to take that thing apart from the inside out.” Love has described the Caucus as “…demagoguery.”
“They sit there and ignite emotions and ignite racism when there isn’t. They use their positions to instill fear. Hope and change is turned into fear and blame. Fear that everybody is going to lose everything and blaming Congress for everything instead of taking responsibility,” she has stated.
Love is pro-life and supports domestic energy exploration, local control of education, Second Amendment rights, and state control of public lands. She favors “fiscal discipline, limited government, and personal responsibility” and has said that she asks herself three questions whenever she approaches an issue: “Is it affordable? Is it sustainable? Is it my job?”
SOURCE: News Americas Now
Haitian-American
