Just 29 years old, Christina Hagan might be the most interesting candidate running in 2018.
She is a female Republican, the youngest ever to serve in Ohio’s state legislature. She is a surrogate for the administration, rising to prominence for her defense of President Trump against accusations of sexism. She is a candidate to replace outgoing Rep. Jim Renacci, who is running for Senate.
And what’s more, she is a mother, more specifically a pregnant mother expecting twins.
At the doctor’s office a couple of hours before our interview, Hagan discovered she is pregnant for the second time. Her husband “smiled nervously from ear to ear” when he heard the news. Her campaign manager joked that “the campaign just grew by two.” The due date is Nov. 6, Election Day, appropriately enough, and the pregnancy is very much on brand for the candidate who styles herself “Planned Parenthood’s worst nightmare.”
“When I was in the state legislature I was actually debating pro-life issues and I could feel my first child hiccuping in-utero,” Hagan remembers. “You know that child is separate, unique, and distinct from you because you can’t hiccup for the baby.” That experience has been an asset to her argument, she says, because it makes it difficult “for the extreme liberal Left to chastise” the opposition “when you’re actually the carrier of another human life.”
It also makes Hagan’s candidate profile more distinct. Running in Ohio’s contested 16th Congressional District, she competes for the Republican nomination against Anthony Gonzalez, a retired professional football player and beloved Ohio State University alumnus. Republicans have reliably carried that district since the 1950s, all but guaranteeing the winner of the primary will triumph easily in the general election.
The pregnancy will bring obvious and unusual challenges as Hagan juggles campaign rallies with medical checkups, fundraising with baby planning, door knocking with nursery decorating. But Hagan insists she is up to the task and points to her work in the Statehouse. Hagan brought her first child, Josie, with her to work for the first seven months of her new life. “She cast every vote I cast,” the mother statesman brags, “Didn’t cry one time.”
That could present an early opportunity for bipartisanship. While Hagan is a gun-toting, budget cutting, fiscal and social conservative — she boasts about slashing state spending before bragging about the AR-15 she received for Mother’s Day — the candidate already wants to work with Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth.
Soon, Duckworth will become the first sitting legislator to give birth while in office. Duckworth wants to change congressional rules so she can bring her newborn onto the Senate floor to legislate and mother at the same time, an effort Hagan wholeheartedly endorses.
“I would second that motion,” Hagan says while discussing work-life-baby balance. All over the world other woman lawmakers in different parliaments have brought their kids to work, so why shouldn’t the United States, she asks.
“We don’t work in a hostile or dangerous work in environment, we say ‘aye’ or ‘nay’ or push a button to vote,” Hagan says. “I think as long as the child and the mother are having no issues there are no reasons why children shouldn’t be allowed to be in tow. After all it is the people’s house.”
Come May 8, the Ohio electorate will decide whether to send Hagan and her growing family to Washington.
