In his acclaimed biography of John F. Kennedy entitled "An Unfinished Life," Robert Dallek writes that the sudden ending to the life of the 35th president "leaves us with some tantalizing 'might have beens.'"
So it is with former Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, who died March 23 after a long bout with brain cancer. Although Love, 49, had been out of office since 2018, she was widely remembered as America's first Black female Republican member of Congress and someone the eyes of prognosticators and pundits were very much focused on during her four years in the U.S. House.
And the "might have beens" were many following her death. Had Love not lost to centrist Democrat Ben McAdams in 2018 by a microscopic 694 votes (.257% of the total), she would have compiled more seniority and perhaps had an easier time in subsequent trips to the polls. A member of the House Financial Services Committee and of the Congressional Black Caucus who once said her faith and belief in humanity "helps me to work with my Congressional Black Caucus colleagues on important issues like criminal justice reform," Love might easily have made it into a leadership position among her fellow Republican lawmakers.
And assuming she had survived the '20 and '22 elections, Love might well have been in a position to run for the Senate seat relinquished by fellow Republican Mitt Romney in '24.
But others who worked on the Hill during Love's tenure were not so sure of her destiny. One former staffer to a Utah House Member privately told Newsmax that as much as he admired Love's personal story and charisma, "[s]he wasn't a subject matter expert on anything and never was going to be one. People took advantage of her novelty, and she spent far too much on consultants and fundraisers. In a way, all those things combined to cut short her political career."
The daughter of Haitian immigrants who spoke no English when they came to the U.S., Ludmya Bourdeau was born in Brooklyn and raised in Norwalk, Connecticut. She earned a degree in music from the University of Hartford and then went on to work for the Sento and Echopass Corporations. Raised a Roman Catholic, Ludmya — by then known to family and friends as simply Mia — converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In 1998, she settled in Utah, where she met computer software entrepreneur Jason Love. Four months after their first date, they married and soon had three children.
Mia Love's political baptism came in 2002 when she became spokeswoman for a homeowners' group seeking to persuade the developer of their neighborhood in Saratoga Springs to spray flies. A year later, she was elected to the City Council where she helped to reduce the city's budget shortfall from $3.5 million to $779,000 by 2011.
By then, Love had moved up to become mayor of Saratoga Springs but bigger things beckoned. She ran for Congress a year later against Democrat Rep. Jim Matheson, son of popular former three-term Gov. Scott Matheson. With Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the National Republican Congressional Committee giving Love her full support, she nonetheless fell short by 768 votes out of nearly 246,000 cast.
When Matheson decided to step down in 2014, Love was again the Republican nominee. Running as a conservative on fiscal and cultural issues, she won a tight race over Doug Owens, son of two-time Senate nominee and former Rep. Wayne Owens.
Her conservative record notwithstanding, Love never truly adapted to a changing and more populist Republican Party. Backed by the local Tea Party movement in her bids for Congress, she nonetheless chastised it for supporting a government shutdown. An original backer of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for president in 2016, the Utahan eventually lined up for Donald Trump when his nomination became certain. She did, however, criticize him for what she felt were derogatory remarks about Haitian immigrants and, following release of the notorious Access Hollywood tape in which the nominee made lewd comments about women, Love called on him to withdraw from the race. In Congress, she publicly fought Trump on the imposition of tariffs.
President Trump was certainly aware of her and following her defeat in 2018, he told reporters "Mia Love gave me no love and she lost." In conceding defeat, the congresswoman said "[b]ecause Republicans never take minority communities into their home and citizens into their homes and into their hearts, those voters stay with Democrats and bureaucrats in Washington because they do take them home or at least make them feel like they have a home."
In 2024, Love put aside past differences and endorsed Trump.
Few disagree that Mia Love had an "unfinished life" in politics. How that life may have turned out had she pulled off reelection in 2018 and whether she would have gone on to bigger things is a matter of conjecture. Agreed by all those who knew her was that the Utah lawmaker was someone with a strong sense of serving the public with a good heart.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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