Anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer launched a congressional bid on Friday, setting herself up for almost certain defeat in a heavily Democratic House district.
Loomer registered to run as a Republican against Rep. Lois Frankel (D) in Florida’s 21st Congressional District, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission.
Loomer, a pro-Trump internet personality, has become notorious both for her attention-seeking stunts and vicious rhetoric against Muslim-Americans. After being banned from Twitter last year, Loomer made headlines by donning a yellow Star of David and handcuffing herself to a door at one of the social media giant’s New York headquarters—but only to one part of the entryway, meaning she had failed to actually block the door.
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Loomer didn’t respond to a request for comment on her bid. In June, Loomer told a Florida politics blog that she was considering running for the southern Florida seat, and claimed that she thought she could beat Frankel in the general election.
If Loomer defeats the other three Republican candidates who have declared for the primary, though, she’ll face incredibly long odds against Frankel, who has been in the House since 2012. Frankel didn’t even have a Republican challenger in 2018, and defeated her Republican opponent in 2016 by more than 27 percentage points.
Loomer could face another challenge on the campaign trail: being banned from every major social media network. Besides Twitter, Loomer is also banned from Facebook and Instagram, meaning she’s restricted to using comparatively lesser-known social media apps like Parler and Russian encrypted messaging app Telegram. Loomer, the self-described “most banned woman in the world,” was also banned from Lyft, Uber, and even Uber Eats in 2017 after tweeting that she didn’t want to be driven by Muslim rideshare drivers.
Since losing her main social media accounts, Loomer has resorted to a number of stunts that seem designed to earn her more attention, with her congressional bid as potentially just the latest in that series. Along with handcuffing herself to Twitter’s headquarters, Loomer has tricked undocumented immigrants into trespassing at a home owned by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and was arrested after trespassing at the California governor’s mansion. The Conservative Political Action Conference banned Loomer from their event in March after she used her press pass to chase reporters through the conference, in a confrontational practice she calls “Loomering.”
