Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), who served as the grand marshal of Orlando’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, waves to the crowd earlier this month, as the Senate impeachment trial was about to begin. (Willie J. Allen Jr./for The Washington Post)

Florida Congresswoman Valdez Venita Butler, the seventh child of James and Elouise, has risen from her coveted role as a sixth-grader safety patrol leader to U.S. representative of Florida’s 10th Congressional District. Ellen McCarthy profiles Demings for the Washington Post.

“And let me tell you something,” Demings said in her McCarthy interview. “When they gave me that badge and my belt, I was trying to tell everybody what to do.”

In December, when the House Judiciary Committee debated the articles of impeachment against the president, Demings began her turn at the mic by talking about herself. “I believe that only in America can a little black girl, the daughter of a maid and a janitor, growing up in the South in the ’60s, have such an amazing opportunity,” she said then, talking about her election to Congress. “No one,” she added, “can make me give up on America.”

AOC also recently profiled Congresswoman Demings, including the fact that Democratic Presidential contender Michael Bloomberg has backed her political career. With a resolve that echoes that of Stacey Abrams, Demings recalls that she and her six siblings had “the perfect life” with a cleaning woman mom who frequently hopped on “her soapbox” telling them they could do anything they wanted.

“How do we get here?” Demings challenged. Having a life “like this [white] family, like these children? It’s impossible.” But her mom “would not at all entertain that kind of talk,” she says. Stay focused, Demings’s mother would say. Study hard.

Val Demings for Vice President? These SuperWomen ALL Have Bloomberg Backing AOC Women

Stacey Abrams made headlines Friday, saying she “absolutely” believed Americans would send a black women to the Oval Office in the next 20 years. The rising Democratic star with a 5-star supporter named Mike Bloomberg sat for an interview with Clare Malone of FiveThirtyEight.

“Do you think they’ll elect you?” Malone asked. “Yes. I do,” Abrams responded. “That’s my plan. And I’m very pragmatic.” Abrams was interviewed as part of FiveThirtyEight’s “When Women Run” project.

Stacey Abrams came to AOC’s attention in 2012 when as Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, Stacey led the charge against the “fetal pain bill”. The assault on women’s reproductive health led by the Republican Tea Party was particularly agregious in Georgia where Rep. Terry England (R-Auburn) compared pregnant women carrying stillborn fetuses to the cows and pigs on his farm. According to Rep. England and his warped thought process, if farmers have to “deliver calves, dead or alive,” then a woman carrying a dead fetus, or one not expected to survive, should have to carry it to term.

Mississippi-born, Yale grad Abrams arrived in the Georgia House in 2006, serving as minority leader from 2011 to until she left to run for governor in 2017. Note that Abrams continues to fight the erosion of women’s reproductive rights and declining maternal health in America.

After accepting defeat in the 2018 Georgia Governor’s race — an experience she explores in her TED Talk, Abrams turned her eye forward with plans to launch a national voter registration project called ‘Fair Fight’.

CBS News wrote in mid-January 2020 that Abrams reported raising more than $14.6 million in the last half of 2019. According to a report filed with the Georgia state ethics commission, a single $5 million donation came from Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg was the single largest contributor to Abrams’ 2018 governor’s run, donating about $500,000 to her campaign. He also worked with her earlier in 2014 on her New Georgia Project. Bloomberg appeared in Atlanta Friday, January 10 at an Abrams Fair Fight symposium.