In the 2018 midterm elections, Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim woman to wear a hijab to enter the House of Representatives, faced a tough primary battle with former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels. Omar won the primary by a margin of 13.3% over Samuels. This victory came after the liberal-progressive group known as “The Squad” among House Democrats, including Omar, lost the primary due to millions of dollars spent by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
- Immediately after the results were announced, Omar announced that she would support Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz in the November 5 presidential election.
Omar said in a statement, “This campaign was one of the ugliest, most disgusting campaigns against me that I have ever witnessed. We had an opponent who was prepared to cooperate with actual Nazis to defeat us.”He used the expressions. In addition, The Intercept, a news site published in the USA, “Don Samuels-supporting Zionists against Omar”He shared screenshots of a WhatsApp group titled “WhatsApp?” which showed that nearly $100,000 had been raised in the campaign against Omar in just 24 hours.
Omar came in a distant winner, raising $1.6 million, three times the $535,000 raised by her opponent, Don Samuels, demonstrating once again just how influential and determined a figure Omar is in the political arena.
In addition, Cori Bush, in a joint press conference led by Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib and other Democratic Party representatives Ilhan Omar and Jan Schakowsky, called for a “permanent ceasefire” in Gaza and called on President Biden to mobilize all his power to end the violence