June 8, 2021- 8:36 p.m.
Actress-turned-activist Alyssa Milano said she is mulling a run for Congress. Milano said she spends some of her time in Truckee, California, which is currently represented by Republican Rep. Tom McClintock, whom the actress has criticized for opposing an anti-Asian hate crimes bill.
Milano said the GOP has “had a strong arm there in the 4th [Congressional] District,” adding she “would love to maybe consider flipping that seat blue.”
“It’s going to take someone with, I think, name recognition and deep pockets to be able to run against McClintock, and so I’m considering it,” she said. “I’m basically gathering information right now, speaking to different consultants, speaking to the community.”
The actress just finished shooting a Netflix movie and is working on a Who’s the Boss? reboot, a project she acknowledges she’d have to table if she ran for office.
“Before I run, obviously I can’t do both at the same time,” she said. “So it’s just really going to be about timing.”
Milano, who has become a champion for liberal causes in recent years, previously teased a run against McClintock after he voted against S. 937, known as the “COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act.”
“Congressman McClintock was one of the 63 republicans to oppose Asian Hate Crimes bill,” she tweeted on May 20. “This is my Congressman. Should I run against him?”
A representative for McClintock’s reelection campaign said he’d welcome Milano into the race.
“We welcome a little celebrity, such as it is, to accentuate the issues facing our country. Her record of taking extreme leftist positions over the years will create a target rich environment,” Chris Baker, a campaign spokesman for McClintock, said in an email to the Washington Examiner.
Milano has made headlines for some of her controversial stances. Last September, she said the Republican Party “should be tried for treason” and referred to then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden as America’s “only hope.”
“The entire @GOP should be tried for treason,” the Melrose Place actress tweeted on Sept. 9 with the hashtag #TrumpKnewVoteBlue.
Milano’s tweet was presumably about excerpts from a book written by veteran journalist Bob Woodward that included a comment from then-President Donald Trump saying he “wanted to always play [the coronavirus] down.” Trump defended his statement by arguing he took the virus seriously but didn’t want to incite panic.
In 2018, Milano was a vocal opponent of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Milano, a supporter of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements against sexual harassment and sexual assault, said it was “difficult” to be in the same room as the high court nominee, who was defending himself against sexual misconduct accusations from his high school classmate Christine Blasey Ford and other women during his confirmation process.
“I thought it was important to stand in solidarity with Dr. Ford and all women and men who have been victims of crazy abuses of power,” said Milano, who attended the hearings in person. “And I felt blessed to be able to do that and to be there, no matter how stoic I had to be, and sort of prevent myself from, you know, rolling my eyes. I just had to sit there and be stoic, and that was difficult. It was definitely an exercise in how to constrain and restrain yourself.”
California’s 4th Congressional District has a partisan voter index of R+10, meaning the district is Republican-leaning, according to the Cook Political Report.
