Down in popularity: Omar almost ousted by moderate Dem challenger

Likely viewing the idea of funding a candidate challenging Omar as a waste of money, AIPAC did not aid her opponent’s campaign.

By World Israel News Staff

Rep. Ilhan Omar, the virulently anti-Israel progressive Democrat from Minnesota and member of the so-called “Squad,” was nearly ousted from her position by a fellow Democratic challenger, who said that the lawmaker’s extreme views have alienated much of her voting base.

Although Omar did beat challenger Don Samuels by some three percent, the narrow margins of the race confirmed Samuels’ statements that Omar’s calls to defund the police and other far-left positions are not resonating with the community she is tasked with representing.

Samuels, a 72-year-old native of Jamaica, told the Star Tribune that although he lost the race, the fact that he came so close to unseating Omar speaks volumes about the public’s view of her time in office.

“It shows that people are dissatisfied with her performance,” Samuels said. “Even with all the advantages of incumbency and endorsement and recognition and the odds, all of that, that she still could lose an election because people are so dissatisfied.”

“America wants change. And we know that we were offering that change. We know that the majority of the voters in the district, if they had a chance, would have embraced that change,” Samuels later said during a press event at his campaign headquarters.

“My only hope is that my opponent will have learned a lesson from this.”

Omar won her previous re-election by a staggering 20 percent over her challenger, who had received millions of dollars in funding from the AIPAC pro-Israel lobbying group.

Likely viewing the idea of funding a candidate challenging Omar as a waste of money, since she was expected to win in a landslide, AIPAC did not aid Samuels’ campaign.

Omar is one of just a handful of American lawmakers who openly endorse the anti-Israel BDS movement. In 2021, she voted against a bill that would see the U.S. government continue funding Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

She has a long history of making antisemitic remarks, including a Twitter post in which she said that “Israel had hypnotized the world,” and she has accused the Jewish State of controlling global politics through financial practices.