Marielena Stuart, Latest GOP Senate Candidate, Once Banned from Catholic College

By Kyle Munzenrieder Tue., Aug. 16 2011 at 2:52 PM

Because the race for Florida's Republican Senate nomination is wide open, there's room for just about anyone to get in the race. Heck, according to the latest Q poll, some guy named Mike McCallister is leading the pack. Anything is possible. So meet the latest entrant into the fray: Marielena Montesino de Stuart.

Stuart lives in the town of Ave Maria, located in the middle of nowhere in Collier County and marketed, at one point, as a community of faith around the university. Marielena, while working as a journalist for a Catholic newspaper, says she was banned from a press conference at the school after coming into conflict with town and university leaders, including multi-millionaire founder Tom Monaghan.

Stuart chronicles her orthodox views on her blog, RomanCatholicWorld.WordPress.com (you can read her litany of attacks against Ave Maria here), and recently announced her intent to run for Senate.

The announcement is chock full of familiar phrases like, "Yet freedom is never really free, is it?" and "America stands at the raw edge of a great precipice."

She has also established an official campaign website. With Mike McCallister coming out of nowhere to lead the polls, perhaps we could see Stuart makes waves in the race.

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Luis R Campuzano

Marielena Stuart in the Senate is sure to give the socialist fight for their existense,this Lady packs a formidable conservative punch......................................

Cassiusfriendofbrutus

"Stuart chronicles her orthodox views on her blog." Now there's a laugh, I guess anything counts as orthodox these days because I could have sworn she was hyper-conservative to the extent that she was banned from an orthodox campus. Hmmm. . . . . .maybe I am wrong, but that does not sound like orthodoxy to me, but then I just live there and all.

Snxx

Okay, how many errors can one story have? Error #1 - Marielena was not banned from campus because she opposed Jackson Labs. She was banned at least a year before Jackson Lab was even mentioned as a possiblity for the area, and she was allowed back on campus many months before there was any talk of Jackson Labs coming to Ave Maria.

The reason she was banned was not her "orthodoxy" but basically because she had a history of interrupting meetings. The real reason for her banning was because she insisted on crashing her way into a press meeting without satisfactory press credentials from The Wanderer, a little-known fringe newspaper, after the university had plainly told her not to attend.

Error #2: The town of Ave Maria was not built as "a community of faith." It is a public town like any other, and was built by Barron Collier, who, well after the community was conceived, took on Tom Monaghan, founder of Ave Maria University, as a partner, the idea being to have a college to anchor the community. If there had been another college looking for a site in Southwest Florida, secular or Episcopalian or Amish, Barron Collier would have wooed them instead.

john dough

Ave Maria was founded as a faith based community. I considered buying into the community, at that time. That was how it was marketed, in the ads I saw.Health issues concerning my spouse precluded my buying into the community.

The faith aspect was the draw.

Pensieve

I'm sorry my answer may have sounded abrupt, although I stand by it, but I saw your reply to me very late last night and couldn't take much time to respond. I am one of the very first residents of this town. I also have been collecting a wealth of materials, including marketing materials, about Ave Maria from its beginning with thoughts of one day writing a history of this place. Believe me, there were no marketing materials describing this as a faith-based community. I have in the past asked several people who claim differently, to produce one, but they cannot do so. What I think happened, John, is that some people who longed to live in a "faith community" read into the town what they wanted to see. And there is nothing wrong with that, except sometimes it causes them to mistakenly recall marketing materials to that effect. There simply weren't any. Pulte and Barron Collier are hugely successful secular developers. Why would they go into the "faith community" business?

Pensieve

I will pay $100 to anyone who can show me an advertisement by Pulte or Barron Collier - the only entities selling real estate in Ave Maria - for housing or property in Ave Maria that claimed the town was a faith-based community.