A former Obama administration official on Sunday announced that he will seek the Democratic nomination to run for the seat held by retiring Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
Former Assistant Attorney General James Quigley will make his run official in Miami on Friday when he addresses local party activists.
Quigley has worked in various administrations for President Barack Obama, serving in a number of top roles including as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division. He served in the Obama administration from 2008 to 2009.
“I worked hard and pro-actively helped to build up the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division,” Quigley said in a statement. “I want to be a Congressperson who would immediately and forcefully push back against President Trump’s crusade of discrimination and hate. My background as a prosecutor puts me in a better position to combat, not be used by, the divisiveness that we are seeing.”
The former Obama appointee will have his work cut out for him in a congressional district which he did not campaign in on. Quigley’s most high-profile official role was in the Obama administration as an assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. Quigley left the Justice Department after 25 days on 22 September, 2017, to take a position at the law firm Covington & Burling.
Covington & Burling posted a biography of Quigley on its website Monday, which described him as a “turnaround specialist.”
Quigley served from 2008 to 2009 as deputy assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division, which included managing the department’s complaints against the Detroit City Police Department and leading the government’s response to the Taser injury of a family court judge in Indianapolis. He was also an assistant chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Violent Crime Section.