Opal Covey was 14-years-old when she learned she was a prophet. She was lying sick in her bed and hadn't eaten for weeks when she heard the voice of God. He told her she needed to get her sister and brother-in-law to pray for her. And when she did, she was healed. From that moment on, Covey made it her business to help people, because God had chosen her.

"I perform miracles through the holy spirit," Covey told Esquire.com in a phone interview this morning. She claims to have given a blind woman sight. She says she's healed deformed limbs. Covey speaks fondly of the exorcisms she has conducted, casting out 30 demons. She can speak in tongues.

"I have traveled, and everywhere I go people are helped because they know I am a woman of God. Everything I tell them comes to pass," Covey said.

In 1977, God sent her to Toledo, Ohio.

"God sent me here to bring the citizens out of slavery from the Democrats, they've been in power for 48 years," she said, the sound of cats meowing through her south Toledo house. "I came here to bring them out like Moses brought the slaves out from under this horrible Democrat government that we have in Toledo."

On god's orders, Covey, a devout Republican, is waging her fifth campaign for mayor of Toledo. She has prophesied victory. As the November special election in Toledo gets ever closer, Covey is putting herself out there, speaking in tongues on radio stations, talking to local newspapers, and even making the occasional national headline. All press is good press, but with the election already decided by God, it seems like a hollow gesture. She's "a fixture in the city's political scene," said The Toledo Blade.

Covey has no Facebook page, no Twitter, no website, no email address. She has no volunteers. (Covey does it all on her own, going from door to door to hand out fliers, because she wouldn't trust help.) In fact, she's not easy to get ahold of. After digging around the Internet, I found Covey's campaign manifesto, which lists a single phone number. I called it once an hour for about a day. No one answered. She has no voicemail.

Finally, she answered the phone. But she couldn't hear a word I said, and instructed me to call her manager, John Schulte, to sort things out.

"You could go over to her house, but she won't let you in," Schulte told me. "You'll have to talk outside her door."

I informed him that I was calling from New York, and Covey and I were eventually able to speak at precisely 12 noon. Her platform for mayor, as outlined by God, is based on two main pillars: amusement parks and potholes.

"He gave me a vision to make this a vacation city," Covey said. Her plan includes installing an amusement park down by the river, a promenade, and a dinosaur park. "It will bring joy to the city. There will be less crime because it will give people more jobs."

Covey is hoping that her fifth time is a charm. She actually won in 2013, she said, but the Democrats stole her votes, crediting her with 142 instead of the thousands she knows she actually received. And she has a pretty clever way of explaining her four past losses: governmental corruption. This is the same government corruption that forced her former business to close when "a raid by animal cruelty investigators found hundreds of animals in her East Toledo store," The Blade reported. "She spent 10 days in jail after she had been convicted of animal cruelty charges." Though she has no background as a politician, she's pretty good at talking like one. She gets heated about the politicians who are hiding money and doing nothing about the rampant potholes in Toledo. She compares herself to another politician: Donald Trump.

"I like his spunk. I like his open expressions," Covey said. "I speak my mind. In politics you don't beat around the bush and you say it like it is."

Her comparison is–in some ways–an accurate one. Is there any other Toledo mayoral candidate making national headlines? She calls herself the most famous person in Toledo. She can't "poke her nose out her door" without being recognized. It's the kind of braggadocio that would make Trump proud. After talking politics, corruption in Toledo, and miracles, Covey explained what it means to talk in tongues:

"Speaking in tongues–it's god speaking but you cannot understand what he's saying," she said. "You have to yield yourself to that ... cowya kasha baki ... there was one right there."

Matt Miller Culture Editor Matt is the Culture Editor at Esquire where he covers music, movies, books, and TV—with an emphasis on all things Star Wars, Marvel, and Game of Thrones.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io