DFL Rep. Ilhan Omar re-elected in Minnesota’s safely blue Fifth District

Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar handily beat her Republican challenger for control of the reliably blue Fifth Congressional District, which includes Minneapolis and several suburbs.

With more than 89% of the district’s precincts reporting results, Omar held a wide margin over Republican challenger Dalia Al-Aqidi.

“Our hard work was worth it,” Omar wrote on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. “This is a victory for all of us who believe that a better future is possible.”

This is the fourth term for the nationally known congresswoman, a former state legislator and the first Somali American elected to Congress.

Al-Aqidi was born in Iraq and came to the U.S. with her family in 1993. A former journalist, she once worked as a media adviser for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Omar defeated her last Republican challenger by about 50 percentage points two years ago, winning roughly 74% of the vote.

Omar, a critic of the war in Gaza, has supported Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz even though their position on the conflict hasn’t changed much from President Joe Biden’s.

In an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune last week, Omar said, “I do believe that having a Trump presidency certainly will have divinity on [whether this] genocidal war continues. And it would be harder for those of us who are fighting to end it, to even be active in doing that.”

If Harris and Walz prevail, Omar will remain the deputy chair of the Progressive Caucus, and if Democrats retake the House, she hopes to get back on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which Republicans ousted her from last year, and chair the Africa Subcommittee.