Via City Journal:
In early August, 33-year-old Ilhan Omar became an overnight sensation in Minnesota politics. Her primary victory over 22-term incumbent Phyllis Kahn secured the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party (DFL) endorsement of Omar’s candidacy to represent House District 60B in the state legislature. Minneapolis’s Star Tribune trumpeted Omar’s victory in a huge headline on its front page, proclaiming that the Somali immigrant’s victory had “made history.” The paper followed up with two more retrospective stories admiring Omar’s triumph.
Omar’s victory shouldn’t have come as a surprise. She campaigned hard in the district, which includes the heart of the Cedar Riverside area now known as Little Mogadishu. Omar’s third DFL primary opponent was Somali, as is her Republican challenger (who has since suspended his campaign). The Star Tribune nonetheless portrayed the win as a remarkable accomplishment, not only because Omar defeated Kahn, who is tied for the longest-serving legislator in state history, but also because of Omar’s background. She spent time in a Kenyan refugee camp before settling in the Twin Cities in the late 1990s.
As many candidates do, Omar has made her personal background an integral part of her campaign. But neither the candidate nor the reporters who covered her have shown much interest in exploring one aspect of her personal story that recently came to public attention: the fact that she is not legally married to the man she advertises as the husband and the father of her three children. In fact, she is legally married to another man—who may be her brother. A posting on the SomaliSpot discussion board alleged that Omar had married the man touted as her husband in 2002 before marrying her brother for fraudulent purposes in 2009. The post, which seems to have been written by someone from Minneapolis’s Somali community, was quickly deleted. By the time it came to my attention, the post was only available via a Google cache (now also deleted). If the story is true, however, it suggests that Omar had engaged in some kind of dishonest activity in connection with her marriage to her brother (which by itself would be illegal).