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A politician who swears she was abducted by aliens is running for Congress

A Republican congressional candidate from Florida says government regulation has gone too far, and also that she was abducted by aliens in a spaceship controlled by quartz rocks.

“Building on my record of creating economic opportunity and tackling some of the South Florida’s toughest challenges, I will put people before politics and focus on job growth, improving education, supporting small business, and defending human rights,” Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera said when she declared her candidacy in August. “I believe in a stronger future for all South Floridians, and that is why I am running for Congress, to break through Washington’s bureaucracy and fight for the people of the 27th Congressional district.”

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She also believes in aliens, according to a series of old YouTube videos, which were discovered Monday by the Miami Herald. In one 2009 interview with the Spanish-language TV station America TeVe, Rodriguez Aguilera says she was taken by three blond beings, whose bodies reminded her of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil, and who’ve contacted her telepathically since she was 7.

Rodriguez Aguilera also said the aliens made a reference to Isis (though, as McClatchy points out, it’s not clear whether she means the terrorist group or the Egyptian goddess), told her that Africa was the world’s “energy center,” and said that 30,000 skulls of beings “different from humans” lay in a cave in Malta.

When asked by the Miami Herald for comment on her past experiences, Rodriguez Aguilera, who is running to replace Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, declined to elaborate.

“For years people, including presidents like Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter and astronauts have publicly claimed to have seen unidentified flying objects and scientists like Stephen Hawking and institutions like the Vatican have stated that there are billions of galaxies in the universe and we are probably not alone,” she told the paper.

“I personally am a Christian and have a strong belief in God. I join the majority of Americans who believe that there must be intelligent life in the billions of planets and galaxies in the universe,” she added.

Before declaring her candidacy for the House seat in August, Rodriguez Aguilera served in local government as the former economic developer and vice mayor for the City of Doral.

She is running against two more well-known candidates: Raquel Regalado — a member of the Miami-Dade County district school board, who was fined nearly $4,000 for unpaid property taxes in 2016 and penalized for campaign violations, including a $2,000 penalty for illegal funding of a campaign website and video — and the county’s commissioner, Bruno Barreiro. It’s not clear whether Regalado or Barreiro have ever had contact with aliens — neither campaign immediately responded to a request for comment from VICE News.