The group Women Winning has become a fixture in Minnesota politics after working to support pro-choice women running for office for the last 32 years. Among the success stories listed on its website is the story of Margaret Anderson Kelliher — “the second woman to serve as Speaker of the Minnesota House and the first woman to receive a major party’s endorsement for Governor in Minnesota.” Kelliher lost her shot at the state’s highest office in 2010, despite securing the endorsement of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, as the Democratic Party is known in Minnesota, and she has been out of politics ever since. But after a shake-up in Minnesota Democratic politics created a rare opening in the state’s 5th Congressional District in June, Kelliher decided to enter the fray once more. Primary voters in the district tend to be mostly female, and an endorsement by Women Winning, a political action committee that is essentially the local equivalent of EMILY’s List, carries a lot of weight. Given that Women Winning already touts Kelliher on its website, one might presume that the group’s endorsement was a given. But in a sign of the changing times — at a moment when insurgent candidates are working to defeat the old guard of the Democratic Party — the group overlooked the candidate it champions as core to its success. It instead opted to endorse Ilhan Omar, a freshman state representative, in the 5th District race. Omar participated in the organization’s training program for candidates and earned its backing during her 2016 entree into politics. The crowded primary field includes Somali-American activist and engineer Jamal Abdulahi and former Republican Frank Drake, but is largely viewed as a three-way contest between Kelliher, Omar, and Patricia Torres Ray, who has been a state senator for 12 years. The 5th District seat is highly coveted: Its current occupant, Keith Ellison, is just one of three people to hold that job in the last 55 years. The Women Winning endorsement speaks to the dynamics of the race, where the leading candidates generally agree on the issues that have become a litmus test for progressivism in 2018: They’ve all called for abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; they support “Medicare for All”; and they’re devoted to fighting climate change and making public education more accessible. The district is the bluest in the state and one of the most progressive in the country, so it’s no surprise that those issues are, more or less, not up for debate. Whoever wins, there’s “no question” that 5th District voters will send a progressive woman to Congress, said Mike Erlandson, a former DFL chair who now works in public affairs consulting. He added that Kelliher, Omar, and Torres Ray would likely have similar voting records if elected. “It’s really more of a competition about who is the type of person who would be most effective for the district,” he said.

Democratic-Farmer-Labor-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Margaret Anderson Kelliher addresses supporters as they await primary results at Jax Cafe in Minneapolis, Aug. 11, 2010. Photo: Andy King/AP

Countless candidates across the country have been inspired to run for national office by what they see as the regressive and detrimental policies of the Donald Trump White House. The women of the 5th District are no different. Kelliher, who declined an interview request, emphasized the need to resist the president’s agenda in a statement to The Intercept. “As an organizer who learned from the late-Senator Paul Wellstone, I believe in the power of representing the people who have been left behind,” she wrote, citing her record of standing up to the state’s Republican governor as House speaker. “I will take my fight and leadership to Congress to make sure we stand up to Donald Trump and get our country back.” Both Omar’s and Torres Ray’s candidacies carry symbolic weight in the age of Trump. Omar, who was elected to be state representative on the same night Trump won the presidency, made history as the first Somali-American legislator in the United States. Torres Ray’s 2006 election made her the first Latina in the Minnesota Senate. But that’s far from the only, or even primary, reason they’re running for a higher office. Torres Ray likened her candidacy to her decision to run for the state Senate 13 years ago, when she was working on child welfare issues in the Department of Human Services under Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. “I was working for the state and seeing every day what was happening directly” as a result of budget cuts, she said. “It was a moment — politically, socially, economically, personally — that I felt I needed to do my part.” Now, as she observes “the horrors that are taking place,” she feels it is time to take the next step: moving to Washington. Omar, too, said the Trump administration’s “politics of fear” was her impetus. But running for Congress, she said, is about more than just being anti-Trump. “We took this opportunity to really talk about our values and a progressive agenda,” she said of her candidacy, “and not just have Democrats running in our district who are just going to spew out the kind of washed-out rhetoric of going to Washington to fight Trump.” But her story — of a refugee who survived war only to find success as a politician in America — in many ways makes her the ultimate anti-Trump candidate, a fact she’s well aware of. The 36-year-old mother of three frequently refers to her origin story: She fled Somalia at age 8 and lived in a refugee camp in Kenya before immigrating to the United States as a teenager. She argues that representation in Congress is important, while maintaining that her progressive track record is what sets her apart. At its core, her message is about using her experiences to identify the issues afflicting underrepresented communities, and also pointing to those experiences as evidence of her ability to overcome obstacles and find success. “There is space for us to really consider, in a representative democracy, [that] this reflection really matters,” she said, noting that representation extends beyond gender, into factors like faith (or lack thereof) and class. “When we have an opportunity to infuse a voice that has never been heard before, I think it is going to be vital that we take advantage of that.”

Minnesota state Sen. Patricia Torres Ray, left, filed to run for Keith Ellison’s congressional seat. Candidates rushed to add their names to the race before the June 5, 2018, deadline for filing to be on Minnesota’s August primary ballot, at the secretary of state’s office in St. Paul, Minn. Photo: Anthony Souffle/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS/Sipa

Political observers point out that, despite Omar’s national profile — she was featured on the cover of Time magazine last year and in a Maroon 5 music video this year — her weakness is her lack of legislative experience relative to her opponents. One critic, Phyllis Kahn, the 44-year state representative whom Omar ousted in 2016, noted that Kelliher has an “incredible” record as House speaker. “You’re not going to have me speak without prejudice about Ilhan, but she didn’t really have the experience to be a competent legislator, and she certainly doesn’t have the experience to be a competent congressperson,” said Kahn, who is supporting Kelliher’s congressional run. “She’s a very attractive candidate in many superficial ways.” On her campaign website, Kelliher lists some highlights from her tenure as House speaker: She made history by overriding a veto by Pawlenty, the former Republican governor, in order to pass an $8.4 billion transportation bill; she created a nation-leading renewable energy standard for the state; and she increased public school funding. These are surely signs that she has what it takes to pass legislation in an often-gridlocked Congress, her supporters say. Kahn criticized Kelliher’s opponents for using their immigrant backgrounds as a selling point, saying that it is a sign of weakness. “The easiest campaign speech you can make is, ‘It’s time for change,’” she said of Omar. (Kelliher’s campaign website notes that she was the second woman to serve as House speaker.) Torres Ray was careful not to criticize her opponents, but she said the political landscape has changed drastically in the time Kelliher has been out of politics. “I have been working with youth and millennials on very profound changes in policy and with exciting political movements nationwide and locally, and Margaret has not done that for eight years,” she said.

As for Omar, Torres Ray said, “I supported Ilhan when she ran for the House, because I felt that the voice of this incredibly smart, talented woman needed to be there.” She pointed out that they have the shared experience of being the “first” to do something, but that Omar would likely benefit from a few more years as a lawmaker. “I’m just saying that, for me, kind of maturing into that role of being the first, and what you do with that, and how you use the message to empower others — and to do legislative work, in particular — is very challenging,” Torres Ray said. Omar, who has been a legislator for less than two years, dismissed the notion that she would be less effective because she has not been in politics as long as her opponents, noting that her collective experiences make her right for the job. “I have an experience of over 10 years of working with the University of Minnesota, of working at the municipal level for a city council member, and now serving in the Minnesota legislature, and these are unique experiences that no one else has,” she said. The candidates are running grassroots campaigns, swearing off campaign contributions from corporate PACs. Omar was the first to do so, earning the endorsement of End Citizens United, which works toward reforming campaign finance. Kelliher, though, is leading the pack in fundraising. As of July 25, she’d raised about $348,000 to Omar’s $246,000, Abdulahi’s $105,000, and Torres Ray’s $65,000. Ellison, who is now running for attorney general, has declined to endorse any candidate running for his seat, but the major progressive and grassroots groups that have gotten involved in the race have put their weight behind Omar. Her list of endorsements includes MoveOn; Justice Democrats; the statewide and Twin Cities chapters of Our Revolution, the group that was formed from the remnants of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign; and CPD Action, an arm of the Center for Popular Democracy. MN350 Action, the lobbying arm of the climate change-focused group MN350, commended both Omar and Torres Ray for pledging to not accept fossil fuel money. Omar also won the DFL endorsement on June 17. The legitimacy of that endorsement, however, has been questioned by prominent Minnesota Democrats. Critics, such as former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, said the endorsement convention — which was hurriedly scheduled for the afternoon of Father’s Day, nearly two weeks after the filing deadline — should not have happened, as delegates were not expecting that the seat would be contested this year. (Abdulahi and Kelliher both declined to appear at the convention.) Legitimate or not, Omar has gotten the benefit of appearing on party mailers and using party infrastructure for voter outreach in the weeks leading up to the election.

State Rep. Ilhan Omar, second left, a Minneapolis Democrat running for the U.S. House, is hugged after her moving speech against the Muslim ban, June 26, 2018. Photo: Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune/AP