With every advantage in the race, Ilhan Omar narrowly emerged as the winner of Minnesota’s Fifth District (Minneapolis and inner ring suburbs) DFL primary yesterday. She defeated challenger Don Samuels by 2,500 votes out of nearly 113,000 votes cast (2.1 percent). I don’t think anyone other than Samuels and his supporters anticipated a race this close.
The result strongly suggests that Omar can be beaten from within the party by a decent DFL candidate with time and money to take her on. She appears to be ripe for the plucking.
Samuels is a decent man and a decent candidate. He is a former city council and school board member who has supported law enforcement in the crime-ridden north Minneapolis neighborhoods he represented. Unlike Omar, Samuels has the interests of the district at heart. He is not bent on promoting himself as an intergalactic superstar.
Unfortunately, however, Samuels will be supporting Omar against Republican nominee Cicely Davis in the general election. He is a Democrat in a D+26 district.
Omar represents a substantial part of the Fifth District DFL. I saw it in action when they called a special convention held on Father’s Day 2018 to endorse a candidate to replace Keith Ellison. Ellison had stepped aside at the last minute to run for Minnesota Attorney General.
Covering the special endorsing convention that Sunday, I saw that the party activists who endorsed Omar were among the woke left successors of “every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist” identified by Orwell as the fans of Socialism and Communism in England. They make up Omar’s base, and it is substantial base, but she is not invulnerable.
However, she is untouchable by law enforcement and by the media. She operates in the confidence that the rules do not apply to her. One of the luckiest people in the world, she expertly plays the victim card. Her hubris may bring her down before any political opponent does the job for her.
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