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Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar will beat back a primary challenge from former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels, CNN projects, all but guaranteeing that the four original members of the “squad” of progressive House Democrats will be on the ballot this November.
First elected in 2018, Omar, who also beat Samuels last cycle, has now defended her 5th District seat in three consecutive primary elections. Two other original “squad” members, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, both eased to renomination earlier this year, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts is unopposed in her primary next month.
Omar’s victory is a salve for progressives, especially those critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, after a pair of high-profile losses to moderate Democratic primary challengers heavily backed by big-spending pro-Israel outside groups. Those organizations, which spearheaded the unseating of “squad” members Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri, did not invest in Omar’s Minneapolis-area district, a deep blue enclave where Democrats tend to run up the score in statewide elections.
By its closing days, the race had seen just around $3 million in ad spending, with Omar’s campaign accounts contributing $2.75 million on their own.
The United Democracy Project, a super PAC aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that has spent tens of millions targeting other progressive Democrats this cycle, did not engage in the race. AIPAC directly spent about $25,000 on a digital ad campaign last year targeting Omar – an outspoken critic of Israel – but has not been active in the 2024 contest.
In her campaign ads, Omar touted her progressive policy successes, promoted her work in Congress and highlighted the need to protect abortion rights.
“Abortion bans, attacks on IVF. Extremist Republicans are putting our rights and freedoms on the line,” says a woman featured in one of Omar’s spots. “My daughter can have fewer rights than me. I’m thankful, hopeful, because Ilhan Omar is in Congress.”
Another ad ticked through her legislative efforts.
“She passed the Meals Act to feed school kids and brought $54 million right here to our community to create food security, affordable housing, health care, access, environmental projects and living wage jobs,” the narrator says.
Most of the political drama around Omar this cycle involved her defense of campus protesters against the war in Gaza, her own daughter among them.
“I think it is really unfortunate that people don’t care about the fact that all Jewish kids should be kept safe, and that we should not have to tolerate antisemitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they’re pro-genocide or anti-genocide,” Omar told reporters during a visit this spring to New York City, prompting immediate pushback to the claim that some Jewish people are “pro-genocide.”
Citing reports on the alleged harassment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators and other Arab Americans, Omar, in a response to criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, accused the group of hypocrisy.
“This is the pro-genocide I was talking about,” Omar posted on social media, “can you condemn this like I have condemned antisemitism and bigotry of all kind?
With limited airtime, Samuels leveled sharp attacks against Omar, accusing her of undercutting the Democratic Party – a similar attack to the one used against Bowman and Bush, but without the amplification of a multimillion-dollar spending spree.
“Ilhan Omar has gone missing on the issues that matter most for us,” one Samuels ad charged. “Omar advocated abolishing the police with gun violence surging, and voted against President Biden’s plan to rebuild roads and bridges and expand public transportation and EV charging networks. We deserve better.”
Omar has frequently been accused of baking antisemitism into her criticism of Israel, which well preceded the October 7 Hamas attacks and the monthslong assault on Gaza that followed. She was the unnamed subject of a House resolution condemning “anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism and other forms of bigotry” in 2019.
That followed a social media exchange in which she suggested that Israel’s foreign allies were motivated by money, writing, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby.”
Omar, though she has never backed off her criticism of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, apologized for the post, saying she did not mean to offend her “constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole.”
“This is why I unequivocally apologize,” Omar said.
Two years ago, she eked out an unexpectedly tight primary victory over Samuels, who came within some 2,500 votes of ousting her.
But while other progressive elected officials have frequently been confronted with bigger spending challenges from more polished candidates after similar close calls, Omar was mostly an afterthought on the primary circuit this year after taking the 2022 race as a warning and amping up her campaign apparatus.
She also again enjoyed the support of Minnesota’s junior senator, Tina Smith, along with Omar’s predecessor in Congress, former Rep. Keith Ellison, now the state’s attorney general.
On her website, Omar also highlighted – in block quotation – supportive words from President Joe Biden.
“Congresswoman Omar, I want thank you for being here,” Biden said during a 2023 visit to Minnesota. “You never stop working to level the playing field for everybody. And you make sure no child goes hungry.”
This headline has been updated.
