CLEVELAND, Ohio – Hillary “Toro” O’Connor Mueri, a 42-year-old lawyer and former naval flight officer from Painesville, announced Thursday she would try to unseat four-term Bainbridge Township GOP U.S. Rep. Dave Joyce in 2020.

Mueri is the first Democrat to announce her candidacy for the 14th Congressional District, which encompasses seven counties in the northeast corner of the state. Joyce has comfortably won all of his elections since his first in 2012, though Democrats continue to see the district, which includes part of the Cleveland suburbs, as winnable.

“I am here to run because Washington is just a hot mess. The system has become broken because we’ve allowed people to break it,” Mueri said in an interview with cleveland.com. “Dave Joyce has forgotten that he’s here to speak for the people of Northeast Ohio. He’s instead representing special interests and corporate donors.”

Mueri was born in Parma and moved to Painesville when she was 3. She graduated from Riverside High School before going to Ohio State University, completing her aviation engineering degree in 1999.

During that time, she joined the Navy via ROTC, eventually becoming a commissioned naval flight officer. She served in Iraq and flew a dozen combat missions during the Iraq War under the call sign “Toro.”

Following her return to civilian life, she received her law degree from the University of San Diego and practiced in aviation products liability as well as a pro bono side practice helping battered women. She lived in Los Angeles and Switzerland before moving back to Painesville in August.

Mueri has never run for office before and cited a mix of reasons for jumping into the political fray. She credited her background in a union family – her father was a United Auto Workers member and her mother was in the Ohio Education Association – coupled with her military service and the current political climate as motivation.

She said she reached out to Emily’s List – the pro-abortion rights group that backs Democratic women candidates – in 2016 on their website. The group reached back out this year, she said.

“I really believe in the notion where you have the power to make change, you have a moral obligation to do it,” Mueri said. “When the opportunity arose, there was no way for me to say no. I had to move here to try and make that change for the people I care about.”

Mueri listed health care and jobs as two issues she wanted to focus on in the election. She said she supports a public option instead of a single-payer system.

On jobs, Mueri said she wanted to push pro-union legislation and revitalizing manufacturing in Northeast Ohio.

“The fact of the matter is where unions go, the tide rises,” she said. “People in union-heavy districts that don’t work in union jobs have better wages and better benefits. I think promoting the laws that promoted unions back in the day gives everybody a say at the table.”

Mueri has a significant uphill battle to have any shot at defeating Joyce, presuming she wins a primary. Joyce has never won the district by fewer than 10 percentage points, but the district has trended slightly more Democratic in the past four elections.

Mueri also noted that U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown won the district in his 2018 re-election campaign.

“It’s proof-positive that the right Democrat with the right message is a winner here,” she said.

Joyce campaign spokesman Jon Conradi said the congressman was in a good position to win re-election.

“From protecting Lake Erie to combatting the opioid epidemic, no one works harder to deliver results for hardworking northeast Ohio families than Congressman Dave Joyce," he said. "Congressman Joyce takes every race seriously, has more than a million dollars in his campaign war chest and looks forward to getting re-elected in 2020.”

A previous version of this story identified Gueri as a pilot. It has been clarified to say she was instead a naval flight officer. It has also been corrected to show Gueri served in Iraq, not Afghanistan.