( CNN ) -- I hope President Obama called to congratulate Mia Love . The way he called college student Sandra Fluke after Rush Limbaugh called her a `` prostitute . '' The way he called the NBA 's first openly gay player , Jason Collins . The way he called the San Francisco Giants after they won the World Series . I hope he called Mia Love because her story is every bit as unlikely , courageous and yes , inspirational , as his own . Love -- the first black Republican woman elected to Congress -- will not be his political ally and that 's OK . I spoke with membership services and blacks are no longer revoked for voting Republican . If you do n't believe me , please note the most popular black television character on network television is Scandal 's `` Olivia Pope . '' She worked to elect a Republican president twice and no one on # blacktwitter calls her an Uncle/Aunt Tom . Love is progress , whether so-called progressives want to embrace it or not . Her election is a reflection , yea an extension of the Rev.. Martin Luther King Jr 's dream . The daughter of Haitian immigrants , born in Brooklyn , living in Utah , a state that is less than 1 % black , judged by the content of her character . And because of that , she is coming to Washington . If that is not what the dream is all about then we truly have lost our way . As Democrats spend the remainder of the week infighting after losing the Senate , licking wounds from gubernatorial defeats in blue/purple states such as Illinois and Wisconsin , and searching for survivors in what can only be described as a midterm slaughter , I ca n't help but wonder if the victor with the most influence on 2016 is Love . For if the sexist/racist/anti-immigration narrative that has long dogged the GOP can , at the very least , be challenged by her presence at a campaign , what will Democrats use to fire up low-information liberals ? The blue 's yin to the red 's `` Obama is the worse president ever '' yang . Not to mention that Love ( along with South Carolina 's Tim Scott , the first black senator elected in the South since Reconstruction ) is an affront to those Republican voters who do harbor racist thoughts . Whether Love and Scott will go along to get along when the conversation regarding immigration or public assistance starts to sound a little too much like the GOP of the 1990s remains to be seen . But what is clear is that Love knows how to overcome adversity . Her father worked as a janitor , among other jobs , to put her through school at the University of Hartford . After speaking at the Republican National Convention in 2012 , where she said `` my parents immigrated to the U.S. with $ 10 in their pocket ... when times got tough , they did n't look to Washington , they looked within '' as well as that Obama 's `` policies have failed . '' Afterward , her Wikipedia page was vandalized , as those who did n't approve of her brief address called her a `` whore , '' `` sellout '' and `` House N -- r. '' Insert `` war on women '' joke here . The first time she ran for Congress , she lost . Yet through it all , she persevered . Perhaps when Sen. Rand Paul said the GOP had a shot to attract a third of the black vote in 2016 , he had Love in mind . Folks can identify with the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps narrative that is often embraced by GOP minority candidates in one way or another . For more than 40 years , Democratic presidential candidates have enjoyed the support of more than 80 % of black voters , and yet the community 's unemployment rate remains twice that of its white counterpart . The wealth gap between blacks and whites has grown . The criminal justice system is riddled with discrepancies along racial lines . Paul has spoken about these concerns with compassion , albeit clumsily at times . Newly elected Illinois Gov . Bruce Rauner , a Republican , aggressively went after the black vote in Chicago â€ ” despite it being President Obama 's backyard â€ ” with a message that he could turn around the economic woes that have hampered the community . And in turn he did manage to receive endorsements from numerous pastors and high-profile blacks . Of course it did n't hurt that the wealthy Republican invested $ 1 million of his own money in the South Side Community Federal Credit Union , which is in a predominantly black neighborhood . `` ( He 's ) taking the black vote for granted , '' Rauner said in a debate with Quinn that was sponsored by the Urban League . While he ended up with only 6 % of the black vote , the fact that he would be so bold with his intentions shows the days of Republicans ignoring the black vote may in fact be gone . Just south of Rauner , Ohio incumbent Gov . John Kasich received 26 % of the black vote . If blacks are willing to buck the trend and vote Republican , then it would only make sense that the GOP would have black candidates . And black elected officials , like Love , an outsider who came out of nowhere to shock the world and claim her own piece of the dream . Sort of like another history-making black elected official we know .
Mia Love became the first black Republican woman in Congress . LZ Granderson says her life story is inspirational and reflects MLK 's dream . He says Love 's story shows that Democrats do n't have exclusive right to black voters .