By BRAD SLAGER
Laura Loomer
Attention-nabbing media figure and serial-banning victim Laura Loomer has announced she will be starting her campaign for the U.S. Congress in the Sunshine State. She will vie for Democrat Lois Frankel’s seat in solid-left-leaning District 21. Uphill struggle isn’t the half of it: Frankel ran unopposed in 2018.
Loomer has made a name for herself over the years as a journalist working for a number of alternative news outlets, making dramatic departures from said outlets, and getting herself de-platformed from a wide array of social media outlets. Lately, Loomer has been concentrating on staging photo-op posturing appearances to self-aggrandize herself as a political voice.
In her press release announcing her candidacy, Loomer states one of the motivations to run has been that, after being banned from a number of social websites, Frankel was of little help to her plight. “(Laura) reached out to her representative Lois Frankel who offered her no help despite claiming to be a First Amendment supporter.”
Some have questioned whether this announcement is merely another attention-grabbing stunt, following a line of recent such events. Loomer has recently been arrested for trespassing on the California governor’s property; she lured immigrants to another property owned by Nancy Pelosi; and following her removal from Twitter, she handcuffed herself to the doors of the company headquarters.
However, there are actually signs of legitimacy to this election bid.
Former Florida GOP operative and Trump campaign fixture Karen Giorno is heading Loomer’s campaign. Giorno helped spearhead Trump’s primary win in Florida, which got her launched into his national campaign team. This is a favorable acquisition for Loomer, because there are three other Republicans announced to be running for the nomination.
Never mind that this district contains the president’s Mar-A-Lago resort, it is considered a heavily Democratic enclave.
The Laura Loomer For Congress website announces she is a resident of the district (though curiously her listed address in her FEC filing is a post office box.) Loomer will need the full heft of the political party, given she has been banned from most social media outlets. The candidate who claims the mantle of being “The Most Banned Woman In The World” has been removed from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, as well as Medium, the crowdsource outlet GoFundMe as well as PayPal and Venmo. She also sports bans from MGM Resorts and the rideshare companies Uber, Lyft, and UberEats.
The national Democratic Party wasted no time in resorting to its traditional method of demonization. “This is today’s Washington Republican Party, a full-blown white nationalist is running for Congress in Florida,” said a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Republicans must condemn Loomer’s hate-filled message or they own it.”
Considering the hesitancy the party has had with condemning the history of racism with Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, and the failure of the House Dems to properly address the growing anti-Semitism within its freshman membership, the DCCC even daring to invoke a party failing to condemn anything is a farce of hilarious proportions.
Brad Slager, a Fort Lauderdale freelance writer, wrote this story exclusively for Sunshine State News. He writes on politics and the industry and his stories appear in such publications as RedState and The Federalist.