By, Jennifer Lipman
1 min read
ByJennifer Lipman, Jennifer Lipman
She’s 22, Orthodox, sports a sun tan, speaks with a nasal New York accent, and has a sparkly, shocking-pink campaign website — and she is hoping to become an elected representative in Brooklyn.
Mindy Meyer, who has earned comparisons with the Elle Woods character in the film Legally Blonde — despite being a brunette — is perhaps the most unlikely Republican hopeful since Sarah Palin arrived on the scene.
Ms Meyer, who is hoping to be voted in as a state senator in November, claims to be “the first young woman in the history of New York to run for the State Senate”.
Whether or not the self-proclaimed “Diva of the District” will succeed in unseating the Democrat incumbent, she has certainly captured the media’s attention, not least by corrupting the song I’m sexy and I know it, to I’m senator and I know it as her campaign motto.
And, like an experienced politician, she appears smiling in photographs with babies, pensioners and even a local basketball team.
A recent political-science graduate who spent a gap year in Israel and is now studying to become a lawyer, she boasts that she is corruption-free and intends to follow her religious values if elected.
Despite its pink exterior, her website reveals a range of political commitments, including support for victims of domestic violence and summer education schemes for young people. Her approach to poverty and unemployment is illustrated by a photograph of her holding a bow and arrow in a tribute to Katniss from the popular Hunger Games novels.
She supports capital punishment and — naturally for a Conservative American politician — is against abortion and argues instead that “women today have choices … when faced with the prospect of an unwanted pregnancy”, including support groups and adoption.
Despite being compared to the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, Ms Meyer has denied that Sarah Palin is one of her role-models and, instead, described her as “oblivious”. Her political idol is the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom she met at the age of 11.
“I sent him an invitation to my batmitzvah,” she told the Forward newspaper.
Unsurprisingly, her strategy is to capture the youth vote with her “contemporary, funky, cool” website, which she says is anything but that of a typical senator.
“Have you been to Kevin Parker’s website?” she said of her opponent. “You could fall asleep. Everything’s just red, white and blue.”
Mr Parker said he is taking his opponent seriously.