First Black Republican woman in Congress honored in Utah after her death from brain cancer

Family and friends of former U.S. Rep. Mia Love gathered Monday in Salt Lake City to honor the life and legacy of the first Black Republican woman elected to Congress after she died of brain cancer last month at age 49.

The former lawmaker from Utah, a daughter of Haitian immigrants, had undergone treatment for an aggressive brain tumor called glioblastoma and received immunotherapy as part of a clinical trial. She died March 23 at her home in Saratoga Springs, Utah, weeks after her daughter announced she was no longer responding to treatment.

Hundreds of mourners entered her service from a walkway lined with American flags at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Institute of Religion on the University of Utah campus. Long tables displayed framed family photos and bouquets of red and white flowers.

Love served only two terms in Congress before suffering a razor-thin loss to Democrat Ben McAdams in the 2018 midterm elections as Democrats surged. Yet she left her mark on Utah’s political scene and later leveraged her prominence into becoming a political commentator for CNN.

She was briefly considered a rising star in the GOP, but her power within the party fizzled out as President Donald Trump took hold. Love kept her distance from Trump and called him out in 2018 for vulgar comments he made about immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and some African nations.

Jason Love, her husband, drew laughter from the somber crowd at Monday’s service when he told stories of his wife’s “superpowers.”

He described discovering her influence after he tried to return the many toasters the couple received as wedding gifts and failing because he didn’t have receipts. His wife then entered the store and came out three minutes later with cash in hand.

“I thought, ‘Wow, I have married a Jedi knight,’” he said with a laugh.

Her motherhood, he said, was her greatest superpower.

“She was an extraordinary mother, and she believed that the most important work she would do within her life was within the walls of her own home with her children,” Jason Love said. “She always made it a special place for each of them to feel loved and to begin to achieve their full potential.”

A choir of Love’s friends sang some of her favorite hymns, as well as Ed Sheeran’s “Supermarket Flowers.” Her children, Alessa, Abigale and Peyton, read an op-ed their mother published in the Deseret News shortly before she died in which she shared her enduring wish for the nation to become less divisive.

Love’s sister Cyndi Brito shared childhood memories, including how Love used to rehearse all day and night for starring roles in her school plays. She was always the best at everything she did and made everyone around her feel important, her sister said.

Brito read an excerpt of a speech her third-grade daughter gave at a recent school assembly for Black History Month honoring Love’s legacy.

“’Mia Love played many roles and had many titles, but the most important role and the most important title that Mia Love played in my eyes was auntie,’” Brito recalled her daughter, Carly, telling classmates.

Love did not emphasize her race during her campaigns, but she acknowledged the significance of her election after her 2014 victory. She said her win defied naysayers who suggested a Black, Republican, Mormon woman could not win a congressional seat in overwhelmingly white Utah.

On Sunday evening, state leaders and members of the public visited the Utah Capitol to pay their respects at Love’s flag-covered coffin behind ropes in the building’s rotunda.

Love, born Ludmya Bourdeau, was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2022 and said her doctors estimated she had only 10 to 15 months to live, which she surpassed. With aggressive treatments, Love lived for nearly three years after receiving her diagnosis.

Her close friend, Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, told the audience Monday that Love had asked her friends and family to rally around her like a campaign team when she was diagnosed.

“‘I’m in fight mode,’ she told us, ‘and what I need from you all, more than anything, is to help me fight it. This is a campaign, and we are going to win,’” Henderson recalled.

Love entered politics in 2003 after winning a city council seat in Saratoga Springs, 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Salt Lake City. She was elected as the city’s mayor in 2009, becoming the first Black woman to serve as a mayor in Utah.

In 2012, after giving a rousing speech at the Republican National Convention, she narrowly lost a bid for the U.S. House against the Democratic incumbent. She ran again two years later and won.