Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Madison Gesiotto Gilbert told Breitbart News that she’s “ready to fight” in Congress for the families in Ohio and the state’s freshly minted Thirteenth Congressional District.
Gesiotto Gilbert, a small business owner and attorney — who was a national surrogate for the Trump campaign in 2016 and 2020 — told Breitbart News, “I’m ready to fight for the people I care about, I’m ready to fight for the community that I care about that I love where I grew up.”
She is running in Ohio’s newly minted Thirteenth Congressional District after the redistricting process took a seat away from the Buckeye State. The former Trump national surrogate noted that the district now includes all of Summit County for the first time in over 50 years, saying that “the Akron area has been made whole.”
When the district was created, it absorbed parts of all the congressional seats in the surrounding area, including the ones represented by Democrat Reps. Tim Ryan and Shontel Brown, as well as Republican Reps. David Joyce and Anthony Gonzalez, the latter of whom earned the ire of his own party by supporting the impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
Gesiotto Gilbert said that she believes 2022 will “definitely [be] a good year for Republicans,” but her campaign is taking “nothing for granted,” as they are willing to put in the work to represent the district the right way. She promised that between primary election night and the general election in November, her campaign will be “all hands on deck.”
“I’m in this race because I want to be a voice of the people. I’ve been on the other end of things. I’ve knocked [on] doors, I’ve made phone calls. I’ve donated my money, and I’ve been disappointed in many cases,” she explained, going on to say that she decided to run out of frustration with Congress’s failure to deal with the issues closest to her, her small business, and other Ohio families, such as inflation, high gas prices, and unsustainable levels of federal spending.
“We don’t have representation, and we don’t have people in many different positions in elected office that are really being a voice for what we want and so wanted to be part of the solution and not only as an Ohioan but also as a business owner here in Ohio,” Gesiotto Gilbert added.
Should Gesiotto Gilbert win her election and join a Republican majority in Congress, she plans to focus on the “out-of-control government spending that we’ve seen for quite some time now” from Democrats. However, on fiscal issues, she believes that both parties must act in concert to achieve a balanced budget.
“We can work together in the Republican Party but also across the aisle to address this. This is going to be one of our top priorities in January.”
Gesiotto Gilbert noted that inflation is one of the more critical issues for people in the Thirteenth District, as the 41-year-high inflation is “impacting people really hard in [my] area, especially when you look at the largest city in our district… the median household income in Akron is only 67 percent of the national average. And so inflation is really hitting people hard around here.”
On other issues facing the district and the country, like the opioid crisis — which has been exacerbated by the flow of drugs through the Southern Border — she observed that the issue became a subject of focus in the Buckeye State in recent years, leading Ohio to see progress in 2017, 2018, and 2019. However, in the last couple of years, these positive trends have begun to recede and even go into reverse.
“[One of the cities in the disrtict] is suffering from 140 percent increase in overdose deaths in the last two years,” she explained. “So people are getting really hit hard once again. And as you know, as we see across the country, [it] doesn’t matter where you come from… This is something that impacts every single family and every single community. We all know somebody, even if it’s not our own family, but we know some buddy in our community or another family that has been impacted. People have lost loved ones to the drug crisis. And now, with what’s going on with fentanyl, it’s been especially difficult.”
The former Trump surrogate noted that people in the district not only care about the crisis itself but also where the drugs are coming from, namely the Southern Border and China.
“Every city, every state right now feels like a border state,” she claimed. “We’re very focused on securing that Southern Border and making sure that we close one of those areas in which the fentanyl and other drugs are pouring across, and the Southern Border clearly is one of those areas.”
She said that Republicans need to keep shedding light on the Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies and stated desire to defund the police.
“You look at the Democratic Party, and you know, their continued push to want to defund the police. We need law and order, and we need to support our communities. And so this is another thing that we’re talking about and focused on here.”
In addition to ensuring that “law enforcement officers have the personnel and funding that they need to stop the flow across the border,” Gesiotto Gilbert argued that lawmakers must take a broader view of the drug crisis “because outside of securing the border, you’re still gonna have people that are trying to smuggle through ports of entry, which continues to happen and things get through all the time.”
She proposes “increased punishments and strengthening of laws for drug dealers, smugglers, cartels, people that are poisoning and killing Americans each and every day.”
“Our policies are in line with the needs and the wants of the people of Ohio’s Thirteenth District [and] in Ohio as a whole. We’re representing people who feel like they don’t have a voice in government anymore,” Gesiotto Gilbert said. “It doesn’t matter whether they’re Republican or Democrat, so many people just felt like they’ve been forgotten by their elected officials.”
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.