Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, the widow of the late U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings has plans to continue her husband’s legacy, seeking out the seat that he has left behind in the upcoming elections.
“I am, of course, devastated at the loss of my spouse, but his spirit is with me,” Rockeymoore Cummings told the Baltimore Sun. “I’m going to run this race and I’m going to run it hard, as if he’s still right here by my side.”
The 48-year-old, who served as Maryland Democratic Party Chairwoman intends to step down from that role in order to ward off any appearance of favoritism.
She revealed in several interviews that she and her husband had conversations prior to his death on Oct. 17, where he expressed his wish for her to succeed him.
“He wanted me to continue this fight and I’m going to continue this fight and run the race, and prayerfully, win,” Rockeymoore Cummings told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
“We had been saying this for quite some time because he had been ill for quite some time,” she added.
Rockeymoore Cummings intends to kick off her campaign on Tuesday, the Sun reports.
She also has intentions of undergoing a preventative double mastectomy on Friday, noting that her mother died from stage 4 breast cancer in 2015, while her younger sister was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer last year.
“Although it will take two to four weeks in terms of recovery, I will be laser-focused on making sure that I am active, making sure that my campaign is strong, that I’m doing everything that I need to do to fundraise,” Rockeymoore Cummings told Maddow, adding that the surgery was scheduled long before her campaign became a reality. “[And] to have a presence even while I’m not physically able to be out in the community.”