Primary roundup: Far-right provocateur Loomer will face long-term Rep. Frankel in Florida

Associated Press
·3 min read

A far-right social media provocateur whose hate speech got her banned from social media won her Republican primary on Tuesday and will challenge Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel for Congress in November.

Laura Loomer also won praise from President Donald Trump early Wednesday, who tweeted that she has a “great chance.”

Frankel has been a political fixture for decades in the Palm Beach County district, which is firmly Democratic.

Loomer has been a guest on Fox News and alt-right programs after gaining followers by ambushing journalists and politicians in stunts posted online. She chained herself to a fence outside Twitter's New York City headquarters in November after she was banned from that platform.

Her campaign adviser is Karen Giorno, a political strategist who worked for Gov. Rick Scott and Trump’s 2016 campaign in Florida.

In other primaries on Tuesday:

  • Rep. Ross Spano, a Republican congressman dogged by ethics investigations, lost his primary challenge on Tuesday, becoming the eighth incumbent House member to be defeated in party primaries this year, losing to Scott Franklin, a former Navy pilot, business owner and Lakeland city commissioner.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Spano for alleged campaign finance violations. The House Ethics Committee was looking into allegations that Spano borrowed more than $100,000 from two friends and then loaned the money to his campaign. But it paused the review when the criminal investigation began.

Franklin will face Democrat Alan Cohn, a former television journalist who had raised about $600,000 for the race as of July 29.

  • Don Young and Alyse Galvin will face off once again in the race to be Alaska’s sole representative in the U.S. House.

Young, the House’s longest-ever serving Republican, won the Republican primary Tuesday, his first step in an effort to win a 25th term. He was first elected in 1973.

Galvin, a nonpartisan candidate, won the Democratic primary with the party’s backing. She lost by 7 percentage points to Young in the 2018 general election.

In the state's Senate race, independent Al Gross won the Democratic primary Tuesday, advancing to challenge Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan in this fall’s general election. “Independent” is a term often used to describe those registered as nonpartisan or undeclared in Alaska.

  • Four women — two Republicans who’ve already served in Congress and two Democrats with far less political experience — will compete for U.S. Senate and House seats in Wyoming after winning primary contests Tuesday.

Former U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis beat nine others to win the Republican primary for Senate. U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney beat a little-known opponent to claim the Republican nomination for House.

On the Democratic side, University of Wyoming ecology professor and climate activist Merav Ben-David won the nomination for Senate while Northern Arapaho tribal member and indigenous women’s advocate Lynnette Grey Bull won the nomination for Wyoming’s lone seat in the House.

Lummis and Cheney are considered general-election favorites against Ben-David and Grey Bull in GOP-dominated Wyoming.