Somali American Wins MN House Seat in Historic Election

Somali born Minneapolis organizer Ilhan Omar made history Tuesday when she won a Minnesota House seat and became the first Somali-American legislator. Her district covers parts of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, southeast Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota. Omar won almost 80% of the vote.

And we will never stop fighting for a democracy that works for all of us, for a prosperous and equitable Minnesota that we will all be proud of

Omar was born in Somalia in 1982. At the age of eight, she fled the Somali Civil War as a refugee with her family and spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before attending middle school in Arlington, Virginia when she, her siblings, and her father, Nur Omar, arrived in the U.S. in 1995. She states that her father opted to move them to Minnesota for economic security and because of its reputedly excellent education system.She has lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota since 1997.