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Meet Mpambara, the Ugandan mother running for a senate seat in the US

A Ugandan-born mother living in Maryland state in the United states of America is currently on the campaign trail in a bid to become a state senator in Maryland's Legislative District 19 on the Republican Party ticket.

Anita Mpambara Cox
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Anita Mpambara Cox lost her July 19 primary election by 28 votes and shortly after the loss, her opponent, businessman Raul Ayala stood down for her because he thought she had better strategies and better chances of trouncing the incumbent, a Democrat Party member named Benjamin F. Kramer.

Mpambara says after the final vote count was announced, she decided to give her triumphant opponent a call.

“He picked up the phone after one ring that Saturday evening and in a very brief call, I asked to meet with him the next morning after church. We settled for a time and a place. I was 29 votes behind and certification was going to be in another week after a thorough audit,” she says.

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“The outcome of the meeting would determine if I would request a recount. The aim of the meeting was to compare our general election plans with timelines and some detail as to how we were going to engage the electorate,” she adds.

"Within 15 minutes of comparing our plans, I essentially ‘became’ the nominee, because what followed was a discussion of how to address the voters and how to actually get it done,” Mpambara says.

“The next 20 minutes of the meeting was about how we would address the voters and about how I would handle a Democrat opponent. I asked Raul to go and talk to his wife and family and then we would talk again in two days. He called the next day and was more convinced of his choice [to step down] and our plan,” she says.

Mpambara's campaign officially started on September 6, running against time for an election slated for November 8.

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Mpambara comes from a long line of administrators in pre-independence Kigezi, western Uganda. Both sets of her grandparents headed their tribal clans and ran local affairs.

In 1962, her father, Sepi Mukombe Mpambara, was one of the people that worked to see Uganda gain her independence from the British and on October 9, that same year, he was one of the people standing on the president’s podium in Kololo as the Union Jack was lowered and Uganda’s flag was raised for the very first time. So, in that way, Mpambara is walking in the footsteps of her father.

Her mother, known for her candour and boundless energy, was the proprietor of a well-known restaurant in Kampala, and ran the family farm.

Because of the political instability of the 70s and the 80s, Mpambara spent her childhood living in Kenya, Tanzania and later, the UK.

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She did her primary school at Kabale Preparatory School and later joined Namasagali College for her O and A levels.

Mpambara left Uganda as a teenager in the early 1980s when her parents fled the country due to political persecution in Milton Obote’s second presidency. The family stayed in Tanzania for a short time before Amnesty International worked to have them transferred him to London.

In London, she attended school in North London and later the University of Wales earning her degrees in Economics and International Strategic Studies.

It was while living in London that she met and married her American husband in 1993, and became a ‘trailing spouse’ within the US State Department’s diplomatic corps living and working overseas.

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Maryland is a heavily liberal state with most people registered as Democrats. It is going to be an uphill climb for her to win as a Republican in an area where most people vote against Republicans, or at least that is how it would normally go. But over the last two years of Biden's administration (Democrat), many people are not happy with the high fuel prices, general inflation and the failures of the Biden presidency.

It is therefore possible that more people are inclined to vote against Democrats at this point in time because of that.

Last year alone, over a million people changed their affiliation from from Democrat Party to the Republican Party.

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Email: news@pulse.ug

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