Florida GOP Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the first Hispanic woman ever elected to Congress, will not seek re-election to her House seat in 2018, she told The Miami Herald on Sunday. “It’s been such a delight and a high honor to serve our community for so many years and help constituents every day of the week,” she said. “We just said, ‘It’s time to take a new step.’”
Ros-Lehtinen won re-election last year in a newly re-drawn congressional district which Hillary Clinton won by 20 points. Ros-Lehtinen, a moderate Republican, has broke with President Donald Trump and other conservative Republicans on various issues, and has said she did not vote for Trump last year. But she insisted that her disagreements with Trump did not factor into her decision to call it quits after 38 years in public office at the state and federal level. Read more at the MIAMI HERALD.
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She was officially raised Catholic but her mother was Jewish, originally Sephardic. She comes from Cuba.