Somali-American candidate’s intent: ‘Instill hope in people’

MINNEAPOLIS — The past 10 weeks have been a whirl for Ilhan Omar, who suddenly went from being famous for becoming the country’s first Somali-American state legislator to being a likely shoo-in for the first Somali-American congresswoman.

“It’s been a really interesting rush,” Omar said in an interview with The Associated Press. She and her rivals had to mount instant campaigns when U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison suddenly decided to leave his Minneapolis-area seat to run for state attorney general. She quickly organized a team to nail down the Democratic endorsement to succeed him, then won a six-way primary Tuesday with a strong 48 percent plurality. “You get what you organize for,” she said.

Only Democrats have represented the 5th District since 1963, so Omar is expected to easily win the general election. Still, she said she’s not taking it for granted, and wants to generate heavy turnout in the district to help boost statewide Democratic candidates.

For now Omar, 35, is pausing to focus on getting her three children ready to go back to school. She said she’ll figure out everything else about going to Washington later.

Omar’s family fled Somalia’s civil war when she was 8. She spent her childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp and immigrated to the United States at age 12. As a progressive activist who was elected to the Minnesota Legislature in the same year that Donald Trump was elected president, she said she has worked since then to organize resistance to “destructive and divisive” Trump administration policies.

“I think my job now is to instill hope in people so that they have the strength to continue to resist and to continue to believe that there is an opportunity for us, for the first time, to really talk about the kind of nation we should be and the kind of nation that we deserve,” she said.

Omar said 5th District voters are young, so funding for education and college affordability will be a priority for her. She wants to get on the Agriculture Committee, even though she comes from an urban district, so she can promote food security for poor communities.

Florida’s penchant for the weird and strange — often manifested in new ways of criminal behavior (think chasing people through a store with a live alligator) — is so prevalent it’s created a cottage industry of chroniclers and followers.

But like a contagion that has escaped a hermetically sealed lab, the swamp fever of Florida weirdness appears to be spreading now to the politicians who represent the state’s nearly 21 million residents.

Over the past week, a legislative candidate staged an elaborate scam to try to convince people she was a college graduate. Another candidate had to deny putting out a Facebook ad accusing an opponent of distributing tainted breast milk. And then there’s the thing about, well, sphincter bleaching.

Even for longtime followers of the Florida experience this is a bit confounding.

“Florida politics has always been as weird as Florida in general, but this year has seen a ‘Twilight Zone’ level of campaign screw-ups, oddball candidates, post-Republican Trumpers in all their lunatic glory, edge cases, easily debunked fraudsters and a cavalcade of stupid,” said Rick Wilson, a GOP consultant whose hostility toward the president he recently channeled into a best-selling book. “The political subspecies of ‘Florida Man’ is in full glory.”

Ah yes, Florida man. The now revered meme and trope about bizarre incidents in the Sunshine State often spreads across the internet faster than a startled palmetto bug in the middle of the night.

It does not on most days refer to those men and women who have sought public office.

But consider these recent events: A city commission candidate on Florida’s east coast told The Daytona Beach News-Journal on Wednesday that his Facebook account was hacked and that the hacker put up an ad attacking his opponent for passing on genetically defective breast milk.

Melissa Howard, a candidate for the Florida Legislature, dropped out of her race this week after it was revealed that she had falsely claimed to have a college degree. Howard had previously posted a photo of herself with what looked like a Miami University diploma. But the Ohio university later sent reporters a statement saying she attended the school, but never graduated.

The Miami Herald reported that the mayor of Hallandale Beach in south Florida on Monday accused a city commissioner of making a living from “sphincter bleaching” after she questioned whether he made a living at all. Mayor Keith London was appointed to his job earlier this year after the previous mayor was arrested and charged with accepting illegal Russian campaign donations.

The Herald acknowledged it wasn’t clear what London meant. Commissioner Anabelle Lima-Taub’s mother does own a spa that sells skin-bleaching cream but she told the paper she doesn’t work there.

One veteran political observer in Florida isn’t convinced that Floridians are witnessing a new trend. Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist, contends the rise of social media has made it more likely that such incidents get attention.

“I don’t think it’s any more or less crazy,” Schale said. “I think it’s more out there … For democracy to be representative, the public space is going to have its share of people who are nuts.”

OK, America, you have been warned.

Melissa Howard