Al Franken Running for Congress … In Ilhan Omar’s District?
Ilhan Omar is a very rare thing in the halls of Congress -obviously.
As a Muslim woman, she gets under the skin of the knee-jerk far-right racists like nothing else, and they spend endless amounts of time screaming “TERR’RIST!” at her, because duh.
And yeah, the liberal/progressive wings of the Democratic party spend a LOT of political capital sticking up for Omar, yelling back at the Fox News freaks for whatever latest outrageous OUTRAGE they’ve ginned up this week to fundraise & hate-click off of.
However.
When you get down to what Ilhan Omar actually does for her district … well, things start to get a little fuzzy.
The latest bit - breathlessly reported by Murdoch’s shit-posting tabloid the New York Post, is that Omar WANTS TO SCRAP THE MINNEAPOLIS POLICE DEPARTMENT!!11eleventy
Of course, on closer examination, Omar just wants to rebrand the MPD as a “Department of Public Safety” and maybe shift them away from their role in targeting & harassing black folks going about their business quite so much. Viz:
The question was to ask voters whether they wanted the city’s charter to be amended to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a Department of Public Safety, “which could include licensed peace officers (police officers) if necessary, with administrative authority to be consistent with other city departments to fulfill its responsibilities for public safety.”
Omar argued in an Aug. 31 op-ed for the Star Tribune that the measure was a necessary step in ending police brutality and making communities safer.
“The truth is the current system hasn’t been serving our city for a long time,” she wrote. “I have long said we need a public safety system that is actually rooted in people’s basic human needs.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison also endorsed the measure last month, saying Minneapolis residents are eager for police reform and “accountability” after the murder of George Floyd in the same city last year.
But here’s the thing: Omar got elected because white liberals in the southern part of her district voted for her, and have stuck with her through all the tumult of the past few years. And she’s been very outspoken about Israel, Palestine, the treatment of the Sudanese refugees, the situation in East Africa …
… but not so much on getting stuff done for her district.
Which brings us to Al Franken.
Who lives in her district.
And who regrets leaving office.
And is thinking about running again.
Not for Senate. Not for governor.
What does that leave?
This could get very ugly, very quickly.
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, who was forced to resign in 2018 following a string of sexual misconduct allegations, is considering another run at public office.
In an interview published Monday by the Massachusetts-based newspaper The Republican, Franken said he has a political action committee and is “keeping his options open.”
The 70-year-old noted that there have been nine public apologies from former colleagues who now believe he was pushed out too abruptly at the height of the #MeToo movement.
“I wanted due process, but I had 36 colleagues and a majority leader who wouldn’t give it to me, so it was impossible,” the former Democratic lawmaker told the newspaper. “But you do have some regrets. It was a very weird, tough situation at that moment. I love the Senate. I love the work that I did.”
Because yeah, the white folks in the district want to prove they are all about helping out the poor oppressed minorities, but hey there, maybe we need some fixing of the schools and roads and bridges and whatnot, whaddaya say?