After running a close race, incumbent representative Daniel Webster beat far-right candidate Laura Loomer on Tuesday in the GOP congressional primary for Florida’s eleventh district.
With 95 percent of the expected vote counted, Webster garnered 51 percent to Loomer’s 44 percent, according to results reported by ABC News.
Webster will face Democratic nominee Shante Munns and no-party candidate Kevin Porter in the November general election.
While Webster prevailed in the R+19 district and is poised to head back to Congress for a seventh term, Loomer provided some competition, despite her extreme views on a variety of issues. In 2020, she won the Republican primary in Florida’s 21st congressional district, which included West Palm Beach and former president Trump’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago. She later lost to Democratic incumbent Lois Frankel for the seat in the House.
Banned from Facebook and other social-media platforms for anti-Muslim comments in 2o2o, Loomer has been regarded as an Internet provocateur who has made inflammatory comments about race and religion. She has called Islam “a cancer on humanity” and supported banning Muslims from holding political office in the U.S. Uber and Lyft cut off Loomer from using their apps after she tweeted, “Someone needs to create a non Islamic form of Uber or Lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver.” Loomer has also peddled terrorist-conspiracy theories about attacks such as the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Loomer has alleged widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. However, Webster is also a known election denier, being among the group of Republicans in Congress who voted not to certify some of the election results in 2020.
Along with Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Loomer has allegedly backed the QAnon conspiracy theory which holds that Trump is fighting a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles made up of members of the “deep state,” Hollywood, and the media.