On Thursday, Compton, Calif., Mayor Aja Brow, the superhero foil to right-wing Stacey Dash’s bogus attempt at politics, has made it official: She announced that she is indeed running for Congress.
“I’ve served as mayor. I really served as a catalyst for a major turnaround for the community that has historically been underserved and disadvantaged. The growth in Compton is evident, it’s tangible that you can touch, and so I would like to take my service to a greater level,” Brown said, KABC reports.
And in some weird way, we have Dash to thank for all of this. Before Dash announced that she was going to run for the 44th District seat, Brown was content serving the people of Compton. They love her. But when Dash announced that she was trying to bring her stupid brand of conservative politics to Congress—just recently, Dash noted that she couldn’t judge neo-Nazis because she didn’t know their hearts—Brown took off her mayoral suit to reveal her congressional cape.
“I definitely don’t want to leave our congressional representation to chance, and I think that the outcome of the 2016 election was definitely jarring for many people,” Brown told KABC-TV.
The California district, which runs from Compton and Watts to San Pedro and is heavily Democratic, is currently represented by Democrat Nanette Barragán, who isn’t willingly giving up her seat.
“We are going to run this campaign like we ran the first one. We’re going to focus on the issues, we are going to run hard,” Barragán told the news station.
Barragán added: “We welcome anybody into this race. The unfortunate part is it really is a distraction from the Democrats’ ability to focus on flipping the House, which is really what we need to do in these times, where you have a president who is attacking communities like mine.”
The primary is on June 5. The top two candidates, regardless of party, move on to the general election on Nov. 6, the news station reports.