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| Loomer's Parents |
Laura Loomer's path to a Republican nomination for Congress includes being banned from major social media platforms, her bank account frozen for what was deemed anti-Muslim hate speech, her green Audi Q5 egged and a stalker who is a registered sex offender.
She's also received countless death threats and faces a barrage of outlandish rumors, including that she underwent gender reassignment surgery or that she's on the payroll of the Mossad the Israeli intelligence service.
But if she beats out four-term incumbent Democrat Lois Frankel in Florida's battleground of District 21, the 27-year-old would also be the youngest person ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
While the best-known facts about Loomer are the outrageous and often offensive things she says – like describing Islam as 'a cancer on humanity' – few know about Loomer's private life.
In an exclusive interview, Loomer invited DailyMail.com to her one-bedroom beachfront condo for a far-reaching interview, touching on a slew of topics, many of them personal.
She described fondly how her mother immigrated from England and wasn't a citizen when she gave birth to Laura – an irony for an 'America first' candidate.
She also lifted the veil off other things she doesn't discuss in public, including her younger days in a dysfunctional family torn apart by a mentally ill brother, and the parents who sent her away to a strict boarding school in the Arizona desert.
And at one point, Loomer even managed to call the first college she attended, the women-only Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, a 'lesbian factory.'
'I'm honest about how I feel,' Loomer said, 'and that may rub some people the wrong way.'
No matter, against all odds, controversy and a month before the election, the Donald Trump-loving conservative Republican has raised more money and appears to be getting more buzz than her elderly opponent Frankel.
Loomer is okay with the bare-knuckle smackdown that has David vs. Goliath odds, saying that if she can swing District 21's Jewish vote, she can send Frankel, 72, into retirement.
'Laura is relentless, she works like a dog, she's very principled and she says things that are unpopular but true,' said strategist Roger Stone, a Loomer mentor who was recently pardoned by Trump after being convicted of lying to the U.S. Congress in the investigation into the president's ties to Russia.
'Even if she doesn't win, she wins. This is just a start for her. She'll go on to bigger and better things.'
Loomer lives a couple of miles south of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, in an area of aging buildings that the multi-million dollar mansion dwellers to the north have nicknamed 'The Gaza Strip' in reference to its un-Palm Beach-like low-rent image.
At her rented condo, which she shares with her English bulldog named Loomer, the aspiring politician had four of her core campaign staffers on hand during her interview.
They included chief strategist Karen Giorno, a New Jersey transplant and veteran Trump campaigner and Bill Lima, Loomer's Brazilian-born 'body man'.
Loomer described to DailyMail.com how she was born in May 1993 in the Tucson area of Arizona to Jeffrey Brian Loomer, 62, a rheumatologist, and Joanna Elizabeth Hill, 54, a registered nurse who was visiting from England on a tourist visa when she met Jeffrey in the early 1990s.
While she grew up with two younger brothers in a financially well-off household that she described as 'not hyper political' and Jewish but 'not so religious,' Loomer said she didn't have many friends as a young girl.
So, she spent quality time in front of the television, on a steady diet of Fox News and the Fran Drescher sitcom The Nanny.
'I was into news,' Loomer says. 'The TVs were always on at the house, all tuned to news channels.'
Loomer became politically inclined early on, and she credits Fox News coverage of September 11 that she watched, alone, at age 8, for her early conservative leanings.
'I'm a child of the war on terror,' she says. 'I grew up on Fox News. I was watching (Fox host Sean) Hannity and (Bill) O'Reilly. They made sense to me.'
Her upbringing, however, isn't something Loomer likes to discuss.
That's because, she says, there's not much to say, and not all of it positive.
With her parents dealing with one of their son's schizophrenia and paranoia, Loomer said, she and her other younger brother landed at the Orme School, a $50,000-a-year boarding school built on a 26,000-ranch in the middle of nowhere, Arizona.
'I'm completely self-made,' Loomer says. 'I'm from a divorced, dysfunctional family wrecked by mental illness. I was shipped off to boarding school, so it makes me a little uncomfortable to talk about my family.'
'I guess this is why my opponent [Frankel] has been calling me a lunatic,' Loomer said. 'Somehow, she's figured out there's mental illness in my family and she decided to use it too.'
Frankel's campaign did not respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment when asked about the mental health remark.
Loomer says that when she started looking for a college at the end of her time at Orme, she was laser-focused on getting into a prestigious school.
She took getting rejected from the Ivy League's Dartmouth College personally. 'I was devastated,' Loomer said. 'My dream was shattered.'
She was accepted into Mount Holyoke College, a well-regarded Massachusetts women's school that focuses on liberal arts.
'What a disaster that was,' Loomer said as her strategist started motioning Loomer to cut it out. 'If you go there, you'll be indoctrinated into a liberal vegan lesbian in no time. What? It's true.
'I had two roommates who were hetero when they arrived. By Christmas, they were, like, together and making out.'
Loomer said she was also disappointed there was no club for young conservatives on campus. 'That place just wasn't for me,' she said.
She then transferred to Barry University, another small Catholic liberal arts college in Miami, - which happened to be where her father had received his master's degree.
And while she says she thrived academically and became active in the College Republicans, Loomer was eventually kicked out during her senior year due to her first political stunts.
She secretly videotaped a conversation with unfazed school officials where she talks about starting a student club to support the terrorist Islamic State.
The video later ended up being published by Project Veritas, a group led by provocateur James O'Keefe that uses secret cameras and deception to make liberal organizations look foolish.
'I was Valedictorian, except that I could not be at graduation,' Loomer said. 'My dad flew in for the ceremony, only to be told I couldn't attend. I sat on the beach with him as graduation was going on. He wasn't too happy about it.'
The ISIS stunt, however, went viral and Loomer began other undercover operations for Project Veritas.
Right out of college, Loomer infiltrated Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and eventually filed a finance violation against the former First Lady for accepting a donation from a foreigner.
The next summer, in June 2017, she and other Trump supporters crashed Central Park's Shakespeare in the Park performance of Julius Caesar, stopping the play right as Caesar is stabbed to death.
Loomer didn't like the fact Caesar was made to look like Donald Trump.
It is during another Veritas production that Loomer was reportedly physically assaulted by Michigan U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib in 2018.
Tlaib allegedly yanked Loomer's phone from her hand as Loomer videotaped Tlaib while asking her questions on whether Hamas is a terrorist organization.
The incident occurred during a campaign rally in Minneapolis for local U.S Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Loomer, who branded both Tlaib and Omar as anti-Semites, filed a criminal complaint with Minneapolis Police but nothing came of it.
There was also the time Loomer rounded up Hispanic immigrants at Home Depot and carted them off to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's front lawn in San Francisco.
There, they set up a tent and took residency on the lawn, which Loomer deemed to be a sanctuary. Police were called but Pelosi declined filing criminal charges.
In time, Loomer became so notorious that she dyed her naturally blonde locks raven black she could find to escape scrutiny in gatherings.
The look now is her trademark.
Changing her appearance, however, wasn't enough.
Accused of hate speech, she was banned from these social media and platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Because she asked that Lyft and Uber provide non-Muslim drivers, they banned her.
And, for good measure, Paypal, Venmo and even Airbnb joined in, adding to her claims to be the 'most banned woman in the world.'
'Laura is patient zero of the cancel culture,' said Karen Giorno, Loomer's strategist.
And it's a title Loomer wears like a badge of honor.
'I'm more banned than (conspiracy theorist) Alex Jones,' Loomer said.
Loomer sued Facebook three times in federal court over her ban, and all cases were dismissed within weeks.
Loomer's political discourse, it seems, is anchored in semantics, and she's a well of clever formulas to explain where she stands.
'I'm not anti-Muslim,' she says. 'I'm anti-Sharia law.
'I'm accused of hate speech,' she says. 'Except that there really can't be such a thing as hate speech. We have the First Amendment.'
One question about Loomer that keeps coming back is how she makes a living.
The financial disclosure she filed with the Federal Election Commission when she announced her candidacy last year provides some answers, and she's doing better than most in her generation.
In 2019, the document shows, Loomer declared making $118,633 from online donations from her fans. She often requests donations to support what she calls her 'investigative journalism' produced through her own media company, Illoominate Media LLC.
Her expenses, the document states, include up to $50,000 in student loans and another loan in the $10,000 to $15,000-range obtained in 2018.
To win in November, meanwhile, Loomer will have to woo the party's local donor class in several enclaves that include the insular town of Palm Beach, where newcomers who don't flaunt their millionaire status are looked upon as mere nuisance.
'When I first filed, there were a lot of questions about me,' Loomer said.
'But I think voters now recognize I'm a fighter. They're sick and tired of do-nothing Republican and Democrat politicians. They know I'll get things done. I've had a lot of acceptance from the donor class.'
Actually, campaign financing reports filed by Loomer show she built her effort of small donors throughout the country.
She has raised more than $1.2 million from more than 2,500 donors who send her, at times, $10 and $25.
'These small donations often come from people worried about the direction of the country,' said GOP operative Stone from his home in nearby Fort Lauderdale. 'These are the people who see her stand up The Squad (young, progressive liberal female U.S. representatives elected in 2018, including Tlaib, Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes), and like her taking on The Squad.'
Lois Frankel, the incumbent, is on track to raise $1 million, mostly from PACs and big donors.
Local Democrats bristle at the presence of what they call an extremist candidate in the race.
'[Loomer] is not very qualified and her wild theories about the world get her the kind of recognition she's getting,' said Rob Long, president of the Palm Beach County Young Democrats.
'Someone like her running would have been impossible a few cycles ago, but the likes of Trump have made it possible.
'Her candidacy is not good at all for anybody. But fringe elements have been given a platform. Fear-baiting tactics work with low information voters whose fear and anger has them grab on to very simple messages.
'Loomer provides the simplest stuff, and some pretty ugly stuff.'
What a snowflake.
ReplyDeleteCue the violins.
Deal with it.
Anon 11:28, the voters should deal with it too? Or vote for her?
ReplyDelete