Republican strategist Kimberly Klacik has won the Republican primary in the race for the late Rep. Elijah Cummings’ (D-MD) Congressional seat in Baltimore. She said afterward that she won because of her “grassroots efforts" and added that some of President Trump’s policies will help her historically blue district.
“What I try to remind people is if you take a look at President Trump — take a look at prison reform, First Step Act, he’s actually just rewinding and fixing what was broken with that crime bill that led to so much mass incarceration that you really see in the greater Baltimore area,” Klacik said on Fox News.
“For the past year or so, I’ve been going around in communities and talking to people. I believe I won the primary off of those grassroots efforts,” she added.
Klacik was asked about polling that showed an increase in Trump’s approval rating, and she responded by saying she agreed with CNN personality Van Jones’s comments that Trump’s State of the Union address could resonate with black voters.
“For so long, Democrats have taken the black vote for granted. I remember after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, she spent two years traveling the country trying to figure out why she lost, but it is because they don’t actually go into the black community and talk to people, or they make promises they don’t keep,” Klacik said.
The Republican strategist went on to say that many black voters will be impressed by the many promises President Trump has kept to the black community such as funding historically black colleges.
Klacik won the Republican nomination to square off against Democrat Rep. Kweisi Mfume in a special election in April to represent Maryland’s 7th Congressional District, which Elijah Cummings represented from 1996 until his death in 2019.
If victorious, Klacik would be the first woman, as well as the first Republican, to represent the district.
Klacik sparked a fierce debate last year when she posted videos of Baltimore on Twitter and called out local officials, including Cummings.
“Residents constantly call the city to remove trash, no one shows up for months,” her Twitter post read. “Rats & roaches are a problem in almost every home. Illegal immigrants at the border live in better conditions than Americans in West Baltimore. This is @RepCummings district.”
Her viral tweets were seen by the president who criticized Cummings a day later.
"The President saw my work," Klacik responded. “This just made my day.”