Who is Sheila Bilyeu?

Many political observers were surprised at Shiela Bilyeu's filing for the Oklahoma U. S. Senate being vacated by Sen. Don Nickles. Ms. Bilyeu gave a home address in Virginia, which would seem to make her ineligible to run for the office -- even Hillary Clinton and Alan Keyes bothered to get an address in their new home states before filing for office. But no one challenged her candidacy, so she is on the ballot as an Independent. She has consistently attracted around 5 or 6 percent in the polls, apparently as a placeholder for the "None of the Above" voter.

In the process of writing that previous entry, I came across her name at the top of a list of former candidates for the Green Party nomination for president. Here's what Politics1 has to say about Shiela:

Sheila Bilyeu was one of only two candidates who qualified for the Statehood-Green Party Presidential primary ballot in the District of Columbia. However, it appears she is only running as a "favorite son" candidate. In the DC primary, she lost of David Cobb by a 2-1 margin. Bilyeu was previously a 1986 candidate in the Democratic primary for Texas Governor against incumbent Mark White (but she captured only 4% of the vote). Bilyeu's 2004 candidacy was limited only to the DC contest. She placed 11th (last place) at the Green convention with 2 delegates on the first ballot.

Oklahoma blogger Awe Contraire considered supporting Sheila, but learned a bit more about her:

Well, sure glad I held off recommending independent Sheila Bilyeu for Senate. I was reflexively turning to her because, basically, she is not Coburn, who is a rabid neo-con, or Carson, who is a DINO (Democrat in name only), and is against the war in Iraq and thinks we need better funding for human services. Unfortunately, she also thinks she has a radio in her head implanted by the feds who send her derogatory messages via satellite.

Bilyeu herself replies in the comments:

Before you write me off you should search for the truth and if you did you would find that I do have a radio type device in my head. An xray could confirm it for you. If I was crazy there are plenty of people who would have been glad to put me away. JUST PLEASE SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH AND CARE ABOUT JUSTICE FOR ALL. THANKS.

It's not every candidate who offers to have her head examined.

Here's a link to the Oklahoman article that Awe Contraire links to -- free registration required.

Updated dead links on 2015/11/23, with the help of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. (Support historic preservation of online content with a tax-deductible donation.) Ms. Bilyeu contacted me via Facebook last week with the following request: "Would you please delete anything in the past regarding my political envolvement." I thanked her for her polite request, but I don't delete information from my website without a very good reason, particularly if it pertains to a current candidate for public office. There is a website for a Shiela Bilyeu campaign for U. S. Senate in Arizona. The copyright date on the site is 2015, and the home page states, "Please help me raise money to run against John Mc Cain in Arizona."