Just days before what would have been Mia Love’s 50th birthday on Dec. 6 and barely shy of a year since a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon was installed in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 11, 2024, Mia and Martha had a moment together. A moment of joint recognition, that is, when Mia received the Martha Hughes Cannon Legacy Award from Utah Women Run, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization hosted by the Hinckley Institute of Politics.
As a friend of Mia’s and a fan of Martha’s, it was my pleasure to attend a ceremony on Capitol’swhere Mia’s life and legacy were celebrated — and where five other influential women in Utah’s political scene were also honored.
Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson paid an emotional tribute to her friend who died in March of this year from glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive form of brain cancer. The Lt. Gov. shared lessons learned from Mia, including the value of true friendship. Right after Mia received her diagnosis, had her first surgery and was beginning radiation therapy for the tumor in her brain, Mia called the Lt. Gov. to check in on her when Henderson was going through a particularly rough patch. In the couple of weeks leading up to Mia’s death, every time the Lt. Gov. went to visit Mia, she met more of Mia’s best friends. So many best friends!
Mia, like Martha, was born to 49.immigrant parents who came to this country seeking a better life. Both were the first at something. Martha, a Democrat, was the first female state senator ever elected in the United States. Mia was the first Black Republican woman elected to the U.S. House.
But both knew that their public service was not just for them — their public service was for others. And both, said Henderson, “worked to lift others as they climbed.”
It was a sentiment echoed by Rep. Angela Romero, the recipient of the “Outstanding Impact in the Democratic Party” award. Romero, a Latina and Native American, spoke of meeting then Vice President Kamala Harris and telling her that she and Sen. Luz Escamilla were the first women of color elected to lead their caucuses — and they had an all-female team. Harris looked Romero in the eyes and told her, “Just because you’re the first doesn’t mean you should be the last.” Harris told both Romero and Escamilla to “remember to mentor and to continue to build the bench.”
Henderson addressed the audience of mostly women directly and said that another lesson taught by both Mia and Martha was that women belong in the room and at the table. “I belong in the room,” she said, and “you belong in the room.”
Jason Love, accepting the award on behalf of his late wife, spoke briefly about this year as “the best of times and the worst of times.” One daughter got married this year and their youngest child, Peyton, leaves Thursday to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Dominican Republic.
But, he said, they miss Mia terribly and are struggling to fill the hole she left behind. He pointed to the backdrop with the Utah Women Run logo and commented that Mia loved all those things; she loved Utah, she loved to lift other women and she loved to run — for office and on a trail.
She embraced her womanhood, said Jason, explaining that from her earliest involvement with politics, she took her kids along with her. Her time as a mother shaped her in how she approached policy and how she connected with others.
Another award recipient, Rep. Candice Pierucci, who was honored for Outstanding Impact in the Republican Party, shared similar sentiments about how her motherhood has impacted policy — and even simple things like the location of a changing table.
When Pierucci was elected, her oldest, now 7, was just six months old. She changed his diapers “many times” on the floor of her office and the floor of the caucus room because there was no changing table in the female legislator’s bathroom just off the House floor. When her second child was born, she began to ask what it would take to get a changing table. Mostly what was needed, as it turns out, was someone to notice that a changing table was needed and then advocate for it. Pierucci did both and then attended the ribbon-cutting when the changing table was installed.
Then, reflecting on what the moment meant, Pierucci said she had the distinct thought that the next young mother elected to the Utah legislature would never know a time when a changing table was not in the bathroom.
Pierucci tied it to a statement from Susan B. Anthony: “We shall someday be heeded and when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everyone will think it was always so.” The women of the future will have no idea, said Anthony, “how every single inch of ground that (they) stand upon today has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.”
Three additional women were honored with Martha Hughes Cannon awards. For Outstanding Impact in Local Government, Kristi Swett, a former Salt Lake City School Board member. For Outstanding Work in Policy and Advocacy, LeAnn Wood, State School Board member. And for Lifetime Achievement Award, Holly Daines, Logan City’s outgoing mayor.
