Kimberly Klacik

Klacik ran in the special election for Maryland's 7th Congressional District to replace Cummings, who had died in October 2019. After winning the Republican primary, she faced Kweisi Mfume, a former Democratic holder of the seat. In the general election Klacik received 25.1 percent of the votes, losing to Mfume, who received 73.8 percent.[20]

Maryland's 7th District, which included parts of Baltimore County, the majority of Howard County, and more than half of Baltimore City, has been represented by Democrats for decades. No Republican has ever held the seat.[21] Klacik, who did not live in the district, promised to move there if elected.[5] She won the Republican primary on June 2, 2020.[22][23]

On August 18, 2020, Klacik's campaign released a viral video, titled "Black Lives Don't Matter To Democrats", which was filmed in a dilapidated area of Baltimore.[24][25] The video shows her asking three residents whether they wanted to defund the police, and they said that they did not.[26][25] Klacik also criticized the Democratic leaders of Maryland's 7th congressional district, citing Baltimore's alleged notoriety as being among the most dangerous cities in America. The video, posted on Twitter, garnered 4.4 million views its first day, reaching 10 million views by August 22, 2020.[27][28] Fact-checking website Snopes called the video "misleading".[29] It presented an area of Baltimore, one with a higher poverty rate and more homicides than the 7th District overall, as representative of the district. The video was conceived of and directed and produced by Benny Johnson, chief creative officer of Turning Point USA.[29][30][31] According to Snopes, Klacik's campaign had "framed the video as one, long walk through a Baltimore neighborhood" but it was actually filmed from different angles along both sides of a section of Whitelock Street that can be walked in two minutes, and Klacik was shown on a roof of a building at two different points in the video.[29]

President Donald Trump retweeted her ad, stating that "Kimberly will work with the Trump Administration and we will bring Baltimore back, and fast. Don't blow it Baltimore, the Democrats have destroyed your city!"[32] Klacik was one of the speakers on the first day of the 2020 Republican National Convention, where she gave a two-minute speech.[33][6][34]

After Klacik accused Mfume in a Twitter post of avoiding debating her, Mfume responded with a post saying that Klacik lacked familiarity with Baltimore, does not live in the city, and that a widely viewed campaign advertisement of Klacik's had misspelled the city's name.[35]

Klacik lost the election with 28 percent of the vote to Mfume's 71.6 percent.[36][37] She conceded the race to Mfume.[38] On November 8, Klacik claimed that she had won in-person voting and that she had raised enough donations to investigate alleged "irregularities."[39][40][41] According to the results published by the State Board of Elections, Mfume received more votes in in-person early and election-day voting as well as in mail-in and provisional voting.[38][39][42][43]

By the end of her 2020 House election campaign, Klacik had raised $8.3 million from small donors, most of them not from Maryland. A 2021 Washington Post article on Klacik's campaign finance filings showed that the campaign paid $4.2 million to two consulting firms. One of them, Arsenal Media Group, who had contracted with Benny Johnson to script and direct the August 2020 campaign video, received over $500,000. The other one, Olympic Media, was paid almost $3.7 million. Klacik's campaign initially reported part of it to the Federal Election Commission as payments to Republican fundraising platform WinRed.[44][45]

Republican primary

General election

Republican primary

General election