Norah Shapiro is either the luckiest or most prescient filmmaker around. She debuted her documentary Time for Ilhan in April at the Tribeca Film Festival and then screened it in May at Minnesota’s Duluth Superior Film Festival. The film recounts the 2016 election of Ilhan Omar to the Minnesota statehouse. It’s not much to hang a hat—or headscarf—on, but it rocketed Omar to international renown as the first Somali-American elected to an American legislature. A member of the Democratic minority in the Minnesota house, Omar has accomplished approximately nothing of substance.
But events in the weeks after the premiere prove Shapiro was on to something. On June 5, after receiving the DFL (the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, affiliated with the national Democratic party) endorsement for his reelection bid, incumbent Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison announced he would stand down to contest the DFL nomination for state attorney general against endorsed candidate Matt Pelikan. Pelikan secured the nomination when incumbent attorney general Lori Swanson rocked the DFL convention by withdrawing her candidacy for reelection after she failed to secure the nomination on the first ballot. Swanson has since filed to run for the party’s gubernatorial nomination against DFL-endorsed candidate Erin Murphy.
In the DFL this year, whirl is king. The Fifth Congressional District seat is a Democratic sinecure; it was Ellison’s for as long as he wanted it. He has abandoned it to challenge the party-endorsed candidate for attorney general, and it’s not necessarily a sure thing. Ellison has never run for statewide office, and his bid to become Minnesota’s chief law enforcement officer is particularly problematic. He has a record of making statements supporting cop killers, including Joanne Chesimard (aka Assata Shakur), the first woman to be named to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. No Republican has served as Minnesota attorney general since 1971, but Ellison might be just what the GOP doctor ordered.
Ellison’s June 5 announcement created an opening for Omar. Omar’s legislative district in Minneapolis sits squarely within the Fifth District. She quickly declared her intention to seek to succeed Ellison. Despite her lack of accomplishment, she won the party’s endorsement at the special DFL Fifth District endorsing convention held on June 17. She’ll face four opponents in the August 14 primary to determine the party’s nominee, but by any reckoning she must be deemed the heavy favorite.
Omar has a certain star quality. An articulate and attractive woman, she came to the United States from Somalia by way of a Kenyan refugee camp at the age of 12. She’s nevertheless a self-described “intersectional feminist” who espouses the full Bernie Bro socialist catastrophe with slightly less charm than Hillary Clinton.
The Fifth District is made up of Minneapolis and inner-ring suburbs including St. Louis Park. With a Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+26, it is one of the most heavily Democratic districts in the country. The DFL nominee will win the election this November. One of the four candidates contending with Omar for the nomination, incidentally, is Frank Drake. Drake last ran for office as the Republican candidate against Ellison in 2016; Ellison defeated Drake by 47 points, though the Legal Marijuana Now candidate siphoned off 30,000 votes to hold Ellison’s margin down. Drake’s candidacy is a joke, but in the unlikely event he scores the party nomination this time around, he would be elected.
The Fifth District includes thousands of Jewish voters. Many of them are party stalwarts and community leaders. In 2006, after winning the party endorsement and proceeding to a contested primary, Ellison felt compelled to answer the concerns of Jewish voters about his past association with the Nation of Islam in a public letter addressed to the Jewish Community Relations Council. Each of the letter’s basic assertions of fact was false—see my “Louis Farrakhan’s First Congressman” (The Weekly Standard, October 9, 2006)—but Ellison paid the community the courtesy of making up a plausible story to allay its concerns. It was more than enough for him to come away with the endorsement of Minneapolis’s (very liberal) American Jewish World.
Omar may have to address a similar issue of her own. During Israel’s hostilities with Hamas in 2014, Omar tweeted, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” In a May 31 tweet this year, she referred to Israel as an “apartheid regime.” This raises a question for prominent Minnesota Democrats as much as for the district’s Israel-supporting Jews. I wrote Governor Mark Dayton, who has endorsed Omar, senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, DFL chairman Ken Martin, and others to ask whether someone who calls Israel a racist state is an acceptable DFL candidate for congressional office. Only Smith responded—sort of: “Senator Smith is not taking a position in the 5th Congressional District primary race, but believes voters in the district have several great candidates to choose from.” We’ll learn months before the November election whether it’s again time for Ilhan.
