Anna Paulina Luna (photo, left), was elected to Congress from Florida in 2022.
She’s an extremist who claims Trump won the 2020 election, supports total abortion bans, and calls LGBQT rights “radical left-wing gender theory” (details here).
She’s a fan of “2000 Mules,” a debunked rightwing propaganda film promoting false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, and accused a reporter of “sexual harassment” for badgering her with off-the-wall questions at her Capitol building office (see story here).
In short, she’s not someone I’d trust with my car keys.
But how is she like George Santos? Like him, she’s a first-term Republican. Also like him, she has a questionable biography.
Luna has gone around claiming she has Jewish ancestry and her father, George Mayerhofer, raised her as a Messianic Jew. But the Washington Post talked to relatives “who did not recall Mayerhofer practicing any Jewish customs” and “said Mayerhofer was in fact Catholic.” His father also was Catholic, and was a German soldier in World War 2. (See story here.) You could not serve in the Wehrmacht if you had Jewish ancestry; instead, you got a one-way ticket to a concentration camp.
And although Luna can legitimately claim Hispanic ancestry on her mother’s side, she self-identified as “White, not of Hispanic origin” in her Florida voter registration, according to Wikipedia (here), citing a Washington Post story. There are other questionable claims in her biography. Wikipedia says,
“Luna remembered her father calling from jail when she was a child and stated that he was imprisoned multiple times for not paying child support. The Washington Post contacted the California Department of Corrections, the Orange County Corrections Department and the Santa Ana jail, none of which had any records of incarceration for her father.”
and, explaining her opposition to gun control, she
“claimed that she suffered from ‘enduring trauma’ after experiencing a ‘home invasion’ at 4:00 a.m. …. Luna’s roommate did not remember such a incident. Instead, there was a daytime break-in when Luna was not home. A police report supports the roommate’s account.”
Why does any of this matter? Well, for one, biographical mudslinging started with Republicans mocking Elizabeth Warren’s claim of having Native American ancestry (which she does, see story here), Trump even calling her “Pocahontas.” So, when a Republican lies about their biography, as George Santos does in spades, and Luna apparently has to some degree, it’s hypocritical for Republicans to remain silent about it. But yes, in Luna’s case (although not in Santos’ case), this is small ball.
More important is Luna’s penchant for playing fast-and-loose with facts that matter, such as election lies. You don’t want lawmakers embracing baseless conspiracy theories. And LGBQT people simply want to be treated as human beings and not discriminated against, and Luna’s characterization of the LGBQT equality movement qualifies as hate speech. These things do matter. And that’s why Luna doesn’t deserve any slack when she’s caught making up details of her personal history.