Ilhan Omar has spent $2.97 million on her reelection this year. If you set aside refunds and transfers, her operating expenditures are $2.59 million. Only five members of Congress have spent more on operating expenditures so far this cycle.
Where is all that money going?
Much of it is going to her husband.
In March, the congresswoman (who perpetually scolded anyone who inquired about her multiple marriages) married her top campaign consultant, Tim Mynett. Mynett’s ex-wife alleged in divorce filings that her husband and Omar were carrying on an affair while both were married. Why does the congresswoman’s extramarital affair matter?
For starters, marital fidelity and sexual ethics reflect on character, which matters for elected officials.
But also, when Omar is funneling the lion’s share of her fundraising to her paramour-turned-husband, it’s a matter of public corruption.
As of June 30, according to her campaign’s latest filing, Mynett’s firm, the E Street Group, has pocketed $1.04 million of her $2.59 million in operating expenditures. That means that 40% of every dollar donated to reelect Omar lands in the bank account of her husband’s firm.
When the wife and the girlfriend of Donald Trump’s grown sons were being paid for their campaigning, that was evidence of impropriety, a New York Times story implied. The Omar-Mynett affair is at least as sordid.
Her reelection campaign has become the vehicle for an alleged extramarital affair and self-enrichment at the expense of small-dollar donors tricked into thinking they are spending their money for social justice.
