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Lucy Flores: I think that it’s maybe one of the reasons people are so excited about this race. I think oftentimes they feel like their elected officials don't understand them. They don't identify with them. They feel like their elected officials live in an entirely different world—and that is really the antithesis of who I am. I am proud to represent the district where I grew up. It's not an affluent community. It's a very low-income community—and I did experience a lot of challenges there.
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To a certain extent, I cannot control what people say about me. Abortion is not one of those things you come to a consensus on. There is no happy agreement—you are either for it or against it. Luckily, I have not experienced the level of vitriol that I experienced after I said that in my testimony. I still receive really hateful, vile, just really disturbing messages on social media, but they are always immediately deleted. That's really the only thing I can do, is just kind of tune that stuff out.But at the end of the day, I am not ashamed of my testimony. I am not ashamed of talking about it in public. This is about a larger issue for me. I want to talk about how we can prevent other young women from having to make that difficult decision, but at the end of the day, it is settled law, it's a settled issue. Women have the right to choose to have an abortion or not in this country. In terms of my stance as a pro-choice elected official, that is what it is. If others are going to bring that up in this campaign, then there is really nothing I can do about it.
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I think it's considered that way because of the way that office has been utilized by the people who have been there. A lot has been made of the fact that the governor [Sandoval] moved over much of the economic development duties that were part of the lieutenant governor's office into his own economic development shop, but you know, I think that's just short-sightedness on the part of the people who have been in that [the lieutenant governor] position.Any job is what you make of it. You can do so many expanded things with this office. I mean, you're the number two in the state of Nevada! You have a platform. You have a budget. You have the ability to be a facilitator, to bring people together. Whether that's around education issues or economic development and tourism, you have a convening power. You can accomplish so many things that people have not done in the past, but this office is only as limited as the people in it. So I do have a lot of ideas about how to make the office more visible, how to make it more active.You have a pretty unconventional look for a politician. How often do consultants try to make you cut your hair?
It was pretty often, but I said, “The most I will do for you is get a trim.” I threw a fit. I was like, “There is no way.” I have managed to get this far all by myself—how I look, how I dress, how I speak, and how I put myself forward. If I've made it this far, I can certainly make it a little bit further.I'm not opposed to tweaks and to improving, but absolutely not. I'm not changing who I am, and if that means I don't get elected, well, that means I don't get elected, but I felt very strongly about that issue.Follow Grace Wyler on Twitter.