WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio- Ohio Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, a Warrensville Heights Democrat whose largely Black 11th congressional district includes Cleveland and several of its eastern suburbs in Cuyahoga County, and a Black pocket of Akron and staggering parts of Summit County suburbs, has endorsed U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, one of two Blacks in the 2020 race for the Democratic nomination for president and the only Black female presidential candidate.

The seventh largest state by population, Ohio is a pivotal state with no Democrat ever winning the White House without first winning Ohio and no Republican of remembrance doing so either.

President Trump won the state in 2016 over Hillary Clinton and he is struggling to keep it red in 2020.

“I am supporting Kamala Harris, she is an excellent candidate,” Fudge said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think there is no one better to make the case against 45 than Kamala Harris."

A former national president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc, Warrensville Heights mayor and prior chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, the congresswoman said Harris, 54, "is someone who when people meet her, people like her.”

The city of Warrensville is  92 percent Black and a middle class Cleveland suburb.

Fudge said that Harris is energetic, smart, strong and likable, and that she has what it takes to take on President Trump, a billionaire real estate mogul and television personality turned president whose controversial policies and recent attacks on congress persons of color and Civil Rights leaders have gotten him into political trouble.

Harris has exceeded former president Joe Biden in endorsements from the CBC, with U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, the other Black in the contest for president, getting support too, though minimal.

Fudge's support of Harris should not come as a surprise as she is a woman's advocate and she routinely supports Blacks for office, including four-term Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, a Democrat like the congresswoman and the city's third Black mayor, and Blacks for Cleveland City Council, judge ships and the Ohio state legislature, among others.

She endorsed Hillary Clinton for president over former president Barack Obama in 2008 when she was a mayor, Clinton losing to Obama in the Democratic primary and in 2016 to Trump as the Democratic nominee for president.

Harris backed Obama for president in 2008 and in 2012, the nation's first Black president currently quiet on whether he will endorse Biden, his vice president.

Fudge gained notoriety not only as a former chair of the CBC but when she toyed with opposing Rep Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the house last year, the assertive and articulate lawmaker, a trained lawyer, later deciding to forego a bid to lead the House, both Harris, and Fudge, among a third of the members of the House Democratic Caucus , and a cadre of Senate members in addition to Harris, demanding impeachment hearings against the president.

The clever and seasoned Pelosi, a Californian like Harris and the first woman to lead a majority party in congress, has been hesitant to push for impeachment, saying as an excuse that the Democrats do not have the votes and should focus more on getting the president out of office in 2020.

Harris is a top tier candidate for the Democratic nomination and is in fourth place behind Biden, and U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders . Biden's poll numbers are at 21 percent, Warren is on his tail at 20 percent, and Sanders is at 16. Harris is at 8 percent and is chopping into Biden's lead, and giving the Dems a clear choice for vice president if she cannot jump the hurdle of front-runner Biden, who has inroads to the Black community too.

Harris says she is proud of her record on criminal justice reform, her critics saying she vacillated on the death penalty as California's chief prosecutor, and should have spoken out more on national and state policies detrimental to the Black community, California the nation's largest state, a state with 55 electoral college votes.

She blossomed after the first Democratic debate in Miami, Florida this summer, taking on Biden and his fraternization activities with segregationists when he was a longtime U.S. senator, and his  stance against federally mandated busing, her poll numbers zooming her to second place and later leveling off.

Last week she said publicly that Trump's racial rhetoric gave rise to the mass shooting a week earlier in El Paso Texas that killed 22 people and left dozens injured, that mass killing followed the same week by a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio that claimed the lives of nine people in the state's Oregon district.

“People say to me, ‘Did Donald Trump cause those folks to be killed?’ Well, no, of course he didn’t pull the trigger," said Harris at the Presidential Gun Sense Forum hosted last week by Everytown for Gun Safety in Des Moines, Iowa. "But he’s certainly been tweeting out the ammunition."

She has taken on the powerful National Rifle Association and has pledged to sign executive orders on gun control that would mandate universal background checks and close loopholes that allow gun owners to buy guns unchecked.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.