Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) represents the very Democratic 5th District in Minnesota. In 2018, she won 78% of the vote. So the district doesn’t attract a lot of talent or cash from state or national Republican political money machines. But as quixotic as it is to run as a Republican against Omar, there is one woman who is giving it a go, Danielle Stella.
Stella is an interesting character. She checks a lot of Republican boxes. She is a conspiracy theorist, a Trump lover, a liar, an accused felon, and now a fugitive from justice.
She “100% backs” QAnon’s theory that Trump is leading the effort to destroy a worldwide child sex trafficking ring run by Democrats.
Stella is running on an anti-crime platform despite her record of arrests and charges. She claims that Minneapolis is “the crime capital of our country” and that crime in the city has increased by 80% since 2017. Both of which are lies. It is 16th in violent crime and 20th in property crime.
Her legal history includes her guilty plea in 2009 to a ‘gross misdemeanor’ after she was arrested for ‘driving while intoxicated’ and ‘fleeing a police officer’. This year she has twice been charged with theft. The first time in January for stealing 279 items worth more than $2,300 from Target.
According to court documents, she told police she couldn’t remember what had happened in the store due to PTSD. “[She] says that normally she goes to Target with someone because of anxiety around people” - which would seem a disqualifying disability in a politician.
But rather than explain her situation to a judge, she blew off her April 4th court date, and a warrant was issued for her arrest. The warrant was executed on April 28th when she was busted for shoplifting $40 from a local market. She maintained her innocence by claiming that she wouldn’t expose herself to the publicity a run for office would entail if she were guilty.
Yesterday, she missed another court date. Her lawyer and psychiatrist were also absent. Another warrant for her arrest was issued.
Nothing in the Constitution or federal law prohibits a felon from running for federal office. But Minnesota law prohibits felons, serving their sentence, from voting - leaving Stella in the interesting position of running for office while being unable to vote for herself.
The Republicans have offered candidates that proclaimed themselves witches, called evolution a lie from the pits of hell, said that women ‘could shut that thing down’ in a rape, claimed undocumented immigrants have calves the size of cantaloupes from hauling drugs.
Other candidates have been elected to office despite charges of insider trading, looting campaign coffers, disappearing DUIs and acknowledged serial infidelities and dalliances with prostitutes. And then there is Trump, who looks to be impeachable, immoral and indictable.
But the odds are long that Stella will make it. She’ll live on as one of history’s footnotes,