Ilhan Omar is a survivor. We know that from her backstory. As a refugee from Somalia’s long-running civil war, she made it to the United States, and ultimately, to Minnesota. We also know she is a survivor based on her political career, and her ability to continue getting elected while occupying a very public and progressive corner of the Democratic party.
On August 9, Omar narrowly defeated a well-funded centrist challenger in Minnesota’s primary election, meaning she will be on the ballot in November as the Democratic candidate for the state’s Fifth Congressional District. Given the deeply blue makeup of this district she is all but guaranteed a win in November.
Omar’s challenger, Don Samuels, received 48 percent of the vote while Omar only received slightly more than 50 percent, pushing her over the finish line by a few thousand votes. No matter how slim her margin of victory, this win is significant for a few key reasons.
On a national level, Omar has long been a punching bag for former President Donald Trump and his cronies.
From the moment she was first elected to Congress in 2018, in the middle of Trump’s presidency, Omar deeply rattled him. Not only is she a Black woman who was born outside of the United States, she is also a hijab-wearing Muslim and the first Somali-American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Everything about Omar has only served to enrage a bullying, racist, and nativist politician like Trump.
Everything about Omar has only served to enrage a bullying, racist, and nativist politician like Trump and those who’ve followed in his no-holds-barred footsteps. Trump ceaselessly launched Twitter attacks on Omar and three of the other progressive women of color elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
These four women became collectively, and often derisively, known as “the Squad.” In 2019, Trump indicated his willingness to engage in conspiracy theories and blatantly racist and sexist tropes by declaring that Omar and her colleagues were “not very smart” and should “go back” to wherever they came from rather than dare to criticize life in the United States.
Yes, that’s classic Trump behavior—but it had a real impact. While Trump was in office, Omar and the other squad members were subjected to more than one death threat, spurred on by his hateful rhetoric and need for someone to pick on.
In July, a Florida man, David George Hannon, was sentenced to probation and ordered to pay a $7,000 fine after threatening to kill Omar and the other three women in 2019.
Hannon’s daughter told a local news outlet that her father had acted on Trump’s call to send the representatives back to the “crime-infested places” they come from. Omar also received death threats in 2021 after Trump-aligned Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Colorado mocked Omar and called her a member of the “Jihad Squad.”
It would have been completely understandable if Omar had folded in the face of such constant harassment and pressure. Many members of Trump’s own party who have dared to stand up to him or challenge his conduct have either quit or been run out of politics; Omar could certainly be forgiven if she had chosen to do the same thing.
Omar’s survival instinct seems to have compelled her to fight openly for the policies she believes in.
Instead, she chose to stick around, and not by hiding in the background. Omar’s survival instinct seems to have compelled her to fight openly for the policies she believes in, even when faced with pushback from mainstream Democrats.
And that’s exactly what she has done in Minnesota. Rather than toe the line here, and cozy up to established, powerful Democrats in her district, Omar has instead been a thorn in their too-comfortable sides.
In 2021, she openly campaigned against Minneapolis’s Democratic mayor, Jacob Frey, who was running for reelection. Where Omar has unapologetically called for substantive police reform, in Minneapolis and across the nation, Frey has occupied a staunch “both/and” stance—even after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officers in 2020, during Frey’s first term as mayor.
The both/and in this case refers to Frey and other’s insistence that Minneapolis needs both police reform and a robust police force. This puts Frey squarely in line with other more centrist Democrats who seek to tweak, rather than upend, current power structures that are built on the kind of racist, sexist, and classist roots that Trump so easily exploited for his own benefit.
Omar’s challenger, Don Samuels, occupies the same political space as Frey, and received the mayor’s endorsement just days before the election.
In the chaotic aftermath of Floyd’s killing, Samuels aligned himself with pro-police forces including Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, who has thus far resisted attempts to reform the city’s police force. With the support of establishment Democrats, Frey not only won reelection in 2021 but also oversaw the successful passing of a “strong mayor” ballot measure that has further entrenched his decision-making power.
Still, Omar has again proven her resilience. In recent months she has upheld her reputation as a progressive activist by joining Minneapolis educators on the picket line this spring, during a three-week strike, and by getting arrested at a pro-choice rally held at the Minnesota state capitol in July.
She has repeatedly put her political career on the line to take a principled stand and still risen to the top—something other Democrats might want to emulate.