Frederica Wilson and her fancy hats: 5 things to know about the congresswoman at war with Trump

Previously known more for sequined style than anti-Trump tirades, U.S. Rep Frederica Wilson has taken the national spotlight after accusing the president of callously handling a phone call with a grieving military widow. But in South Florida, Wilson has been a well-known political presence for two decades.

Here are five things to know about the Miami Democrat who’s battling the White House.

— The sequined cowboy hats, zebra-striped fedoras and other dazzling headgear are nothing new. The congresswoman’s proclivity for sequined or otherwise embellished hats has been a constant throughout her political career. When she was elected to Congress in 2010, she learned that the body has had a rule banning hats on the floor since the 19th century and briefly lobbied to get the rule overturned. According to Wilson, her love of hats goes back to her grandmother, for whom she is named. “When I was a little girl, they all wore hats and gloves. I was always a prissy little girl who wanted to be like my grandmother,” she told The Hill newspaper upon being named one of D.C.’s Most Beautiful People by the paper in 2013.

— This is not Wilson’s first time in national news. Trayvon Martin, the African American teen shot and killed by George Zimmerman in Sanford in 2012, was a Miami Gardens resident, and thus a constituent of Wilson’s. The congresswoman organized rallies and called for new laws to curb racial profiling.

— Although she started out in education, she’s been an elected official for a quarter century. Wilson’s first elected position came in 1992 when she left a post as principal of Miami Gardens’ Skyway Elementary School to join the Miami-Dade School Board. While there, she started an in-school mentoring program for disadvantaged youth called 5000 Role Models of Excellence. The deceased soldier at the center of the Trump phone call controversy, Sgt. La David Johnson, was a graduate of the program. Indeed, Wilson was in the car with Johnson’s widow when Trump made the call because she had known the deceased since his childhood.

She was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1998 and the Florida Senate in 2002. Term-limited out of office in 2010, she ran in an eight-person Democratic primary to succeed outgoing U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, who ran for Senate, only to lose to Marco Rubio.

— While dealing with the Trump controversy, Wilson is also pushing for reforms at nursing homes. When The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, a nursing home in Wilson’s district, lost power after Hurricane Irma, 14 people died. Wilson has been at the forefront of state and federal legislators calling for requirements that nursing homes have backup generators that can power air conditioning.

— She’ll be in Congress as long as she wants. Wilson represents the 24th congressional district, which as of the November 2016 election was 55 percent African-American and 66 percent registered Democrat, making it the 14th most Democrat-leaning district in the country, according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index.

Wilson had no Republican opponent in 2010, when she first won a congressional seat. Since then, she has faced Republican opposition only once — in 2014, when she won 86 percent of the vote.

dsweeney@SunSentinel.com

@Daniel_Sweeney