Don Samuels to run against Ilhan Omar again

Don Samuels, the three-time Northside city councilmember, and one-time Minneapolis Public School Board member, is running yet again to unseat Ilhan Omar in the 5th Congressional District race. Samuels, who is running as a member of the Democrat-Farmer-Labor party, as well as his supporters, believe he can be more responsive to the needs of 5th District constituents than Omar.

“Part of being a politician is being blessed with … support. And my job is to reflect that support back to you and to the citizens of District Five, with great service and humble service, for your needs and the needs of the people of this district,” said Samuels.

Though the elections aren’t for another six months, Samuels launched his campaign because of a very important endorsement process that will start this month. On Jan. 25 he greeted a crowd mingling in the basement of a downtown Minneapolis hotel, some of whom were there to support him.

“He was about the people,” said Sherman Patterson, a former mentee of Samuels and one of his supporters. “I saw him on television, believed who he was, what he was representing. It was just so genuine and authentic. He sat down and met with me over lunch; we had a good conversation.”

A native of Jamaica, Samuels moved to the United States in 1970 to study industrial design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He worked as a security guard to pay for college. He subsequently designed toys and ultimately moved to North Minneapolis where he’s lived for 27 years.

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Samuels touted his achievements, among them staying in North Minneapolis despite recurring gunshots. He also developed a program where police officers can give drivers vouchers to fix their vehicle’s broken taillights instead of ticketing them.

Perhaps he is known for being an avid supporter of law enforcement. “I know the African American community wants police, that low-income people in vulnerable communities can’t do without those kinds of services,” Samuels said. In 2022, as the city struggled with an officer recruitment crisis, Samuels and his wife Sondra sued the city for not having enough police officers in its ranks in a bid to hold them accountable for their recruitment goals.

Samuels is not without controversy, as he made some questionable statements in the past, including saying on Twitter​ ​that he could govern better than he could swim. ​The remark was in reply to a​ comment made by a DFL operative on ​Twitter who said he had such poor judgment to the point that he let a child, Isaac Childress, III, drown in the Mississippi River. Childress drowned when in August 2020, Samuels and his wife took a group of children on a bike ride and the children wanted to wade in the water​.​ Childress encountered a​ 25-foot drop-off, according to Samuels, and drowned.

Reflecting on those comments, Samuels remembered how angry he was. “To see a political affiliated person putting that up on Twitter to use as a political bullying thing for me, I got very angry and I lashed out. I wasn’t playing,” said Samuels, who added the day Childress drowned was the worst day of their lives, and that they didn’t know how deep the Mississippi River was because they’d seen people playing in the water. “I grew up as a poor kid in Jamaica; I can’t swim because of [socioeconomic] class. For that to be thrown up in my face as a reason for not being able to lead, that’s rude.”

Another recent controversy involved a comment deriding Omar’s physical appearance, which he denied doing, saying that what he said was taken out of context. “What I was saying was that everyone has a responsibility to give servant leadership. You have to have open town halls. You have to have excellent constituent service better than the private sector, especially if you meet communities like mine,” said Samuels. “And then I said, in government, no one is cute enough, or well-dressed enough to compensate for poor constituent service.”

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Though the election isn’t until August, Samuels and his advisors decided to launch the campaign now to get voters to participate in their local DFL caucuses that will take place later this month.

The caucuses, which will take place on February 27, are where people solicit votes from one another to be able to show support for their chosen candidate. Those who are successful ultimately decide in about two or three months which candidate the DFL should invest in. This same process also determines who should go to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to decide the party’s presidential nominee.

An endorsement from the DFL could influence the outcome of the race. Samuels, who was reluctant to run against Omar, lost by two percent in 2022. “I kind of stood out of it for a while the last time hoping somebody else would get in,” said Samuels.

Samuels did not seek the DFL endorsement last time but is doing so this time because he believes it will give him more of an edge, as he takes advantage of the elections happening every two years. “We were on an incline, an upward climb. And the time between campaigns is just two years, so people don’t have time to forget you. If we have momentum, we can keep the momentum; we can add value and support and close that two percent,” said Samuels.

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