The polls have closed in Minnesota.
Exit polls favor former Minneapolis City Council Member Don Samuels over U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar in Minnesota’s 5th District Democratic primary race.
The Minnesota Reformer asked several voters outside of polling stations who they cast their vote for in the Democratic primary, and the majority revealed they are supporting Samuels.
In 2022, Samuels lost to Omar by 2,400 votes.
Per Minnesota Reformer:
Ulysses Brown, 76, a retired machine operator with three grown children, said he voted for Samuels because he saw a photo of Omar posing with a gun, although he wasn’t sure it was real.
“TikTok lies a lot,” he said outside a polling place at a high-rise in northeast Minneapolis. (In 2019, a photo circulated on Facebook falsely identifying a woman checking an automatic weapon as Omar.)
He said he doesn’t think things are going well in Minnesota: “Because that’s the way the white man want.”
He said Black people have to work harder than white people for jobs — his top issue this election year — and he’s not happy with Walz. “Because he ain’t doing nothing.”
Mark Johnston, 55, also voted for Samuels because “He cares about Minnesota and not about Ethiopia,” seeming to refer to Omar’s east African origins, though Omar is from Somalia.
“We’ve got problems in Minnesota, and she’s worried about problems in her home country, and I honestly think she shouldn’t be here,” said the IT worker. “I think she’s been illegally gotten here.” (Omar is a legal immigrant.)
His top issue is crime, especially after several of his friends have been “accosted” by criminals, including one who was assaulted in a parking lot.
Overall, he thinks things are “not bad”in Minnesota, although he has some concerns about Walz, including how he and the DFL-controlled Legislature spent nearly all of a $17.5 billion surplus.
“I think we’re turning the economy around a bit, but I don’t walk at night anymore,” he said.
Alex Sloan, a 69-year-old retired University of Minnesota police officer and Hennepin County sheriff’s deputy, also voted for Samuels, citing Omar’s decision to pay $2.78 million to a political consulting firm co-owned by her husband in 2019-2020.