Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/12/illhan-omar-thrashes-well-fund.html
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[Edit to make clear that beschizza changed his own wording (see his reply to me), that’s not me “correcting” him 
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[Edit to add quote from the linked AP article:]
Omar rejected Melton-Meaux’s attacks, saying they were funded by interests who wanted to get her out of Congress because she’s effective. She also downplayed Melton-Meaux’s prodigious fundraising before the vote, saying, “Organized people will always beat organized money.”
[Edit to add: I live in the district, and was unaware of Melton-Meaux before this race.] I should have counted what seemed to me the exorbitant number of mail pieces I received from his campaign. So many, and all of them huge, out-sized, needing to be bent to fit in my mailbox. Even if I had known nothing at all about the candidates, that alone would have raised my suspicions.
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I hadn’t been following this race closely. I wonder to what extent Melton-Meaux was being funded by republicans in his district. He apparently got a larger percentage of his funding from Minnesota than Omar but from larger donors. The district is apparently very deep blue so it would be a choice between a quite progressive democrat and a less progressive democrat I guess?
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@beschizza: typo
Ilhan Omar, not Illhan Omar.
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Narrator: He was, in fact, not shocked.
In recent days I heard she was in a “fight” because he’d “raised a lot of money.” This despite the fact that she’d raised slightly MORE money, and the only polls seemed to put her well ahead of any of the challengers. I’m so tired of the media trying to make everything a horse race when it’s clearly not.
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I’ve actually dialed back “vastly outmatched” as I can’t find a good source for the $13m supposedly spent supporting him, and the official fundraising totals are are closer (~$4.5m each).
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The Minneapolis Star Tribune has a good article, it even includes vote percentages!
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Was he even less progressive?
Yeah, that was why I put a question mark at the end of the sentence. It is surprising that someone with no voting record could be competitive at all.
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I’ve read that a good part of the support for her opponent came from conservative pro-Israel groups. Have you seen anything to substantiate that?
He worked for a union-busting law firm. Does that count as “less progressive”?
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Politico pointed out that primaries in Minnesota don’t require voters to register with a political party, and that subsequently her opponent was sending mailers to traditionally republican homes. Another interesting point was that the star tribune, owned by a local republican, published a glowing endorsement of Melton-Meaux, so it definitely seems like he was the favorite of the right.
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3 for 3, with Pressley being unopposed in September.
I reserve the right to change this opinion should one of these folks have a legit shot at President or VP, but I hope they have success and parlay that success into staying in the House for a looooong time and shaping that institution to what they want it to be. You only have to look at Gingrich and McConnell to see examples of the scale of change Congressional leadership is able to bring about, for good or ill. I’d like it to be for good for a while, dammit.
Pelosi is what she is, but I’d dearly love for there to be a modern Democratic majority leader who has a couple decades to drag the party to the left (kicking and screaming if necessary) on the all the issues that the majority of American people are in favor of moving left on.
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And yet City Pages, the local alt-weekly owned by the Star Tribune, is unabashedly pro-Ilhan. Talk about mixed messages!
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all of “the squad” kicked ass in the primaries. DNC better get on board or we’ll soon be putting you out.
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If you bet on both sides you never lose.
gods what a depressing statement. True, but…christ.
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Just another powerful woman targeted by a long term smear campaign by the Oligarchs.
Those Trillions of Dollars tax cuts for the richest folks that ever walked the face of the earth are so worth making the USA the laughingstock of the world.
Worth noting that Pelosi endorsed Omar in this race.
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The official fundraising totals usually don’t include independent PAC contributions however, so it’s entirely possible that more money was spent trying to defeat her but it’s hidden behind opaque third parities. That said, I don’t think she was ever really in danger of losing.
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