Former Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore intends to run for Las Vegas City Council in 2017, she confirmed to the Review-Journal on Thursday.

Fiore, a Republican with a knack for grabbing national headlines, will be gunning for the Ward 6 seat currently occupied by Steve Ross.

Ross has held the seat since 2005, but is term-limited. Fiore will be running against Ross’ wife, Kelli Ross, who previously announced her intent to run, as well as Clark County School Board Trustee Chris Garvey, who confirmed to the Review-Journal this month her intentions to run.

Fiore said she’s been mulling a city council run since the summer. 

“We’ve been talking about it for a while,” Fiore said. “I think it’s just a natural progression. Since Ward 6 overlaps my assembly district, it just makes sense.”

Fiore is a former two-term Nevada Assemblywoman from District 4 in the Northwest Las Vegas Valley. She ran unopposed in 2012. In 2014, she defeated Democrat Jeff Hinton by nearly 25 percentage points.

She did not run for re-election in 2016, but instead ran for Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District, where she lost to Danny Tarkanian in the Republican primary. A large chunk of Fiore’s former assembly district overlaps with Ward 6, so she will be a familiar name to several voters.

Fiore said her record in the assembly district, as well as the district’s trend of electing Republican Assembly candidates, will benefit her greatly come election time.

Fiore made national headlines several times during her tenure as an assemblywoman.

In 2015, Fiore sent her constituents a Christmas calendar in which much of her family, including children, held a variety of firearms. The calendar went viral, with several national media outlets picking up the story.

Fiore also found herself in the middle of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff between federal agents and the final armed protestors who had overtaken the facility in early 2016. The assemblywoman was a moderator of sorts between FBI negotiators and the five remaining holdouts at the refuge, who eventually peacefully surrendered to authorities.

Fiore also grabbed national headlines in December 2015 for comments she made about Syrian refugees.

“What, are you kidding me? I’m about to fly to Paris and shoot ‘em in the head myself,” Fiore told a radio audience, referring to the terrorist attacks in November of that year. “I am not OK with Syrian refugees. I’m not OK with terrorists. I’m OK with putting them down, blacking them out, just put a piece of brass in their ocular cavity and end their miserable life. I’m good with that.”

Fiore backed away from those remarks days later, telling the Review-Journal that her comments applied to terrorists, not refugees.

Contact Colton Lochhead at [email protected] or 702-383-4638. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.

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