Rep. Ilhan Omar may be known as one of the most liberal members of Congress, but her political role model is conservative former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
The Minnesota Democrat said in a recent interview with NPR that Thatcher is one of her political role models despite their political differences because she led the United Kingdom as a woman from 1979 to 1990 when very few women were world leaders.
“It’s interesting, right? Oftentimes, we’re told who our heroes can be. And for me, I find it to be inspirational for a woman, when there were really no other women around who were leading, to say, ‘I can do this,'” Omar said.
“And I think as I think about my own journey, dealing with the ideas that many within my own community had about, ‘a boy should be the first.’ I needed to have sort of an inspiration, and obviously, she’s left a very dark mark in history. But we can’t take away how inspirationally bold she was to believe that she can lead as a woman in her time,” she added.
Omar, who was elected to Congress in 2018, is a member of the so-called Squad of far-left, freshman members of Congress, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib. Omar endorsed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, in the 2020 primary for the party’s presidential nomination.
Thatcher led the Conservative Party in the U.K. for 15 years, where she worked to stop socialism and played a key role in helping to oversee the fall of the Soviet Union. She famously said, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money.”
