In Minnesota’s Jewish capital, Somali Muslim mayor reaches across lines to focus on community

Nadia Mohamed walked into the newly renovated St. Louis Park High School and started her tour down memory lane.

It had been a decade since she’d walked these halls as a Somali refugee trying to blend in as a typical American teenager. But blending in wasn’t easy. There weren’t nearly as many Somali students in the school as there are today, and Mohamed felt her hijab made her stick out. Some students even removed their hijab on the school bus, out of parents’ sight. When Mohamed performed prayers in the back of the school’s media center, she hoped other students didn’t notice her. She was a wallflower who had yet to find her voice.

She has since found that voice. Mohamed, 28, was elected mayor of the historic capital of Minnesota Jewish culture a month after the Oct. 7 attacks renewed tensions between Jews and Muslims here and around the world.

This could be a recipe for divisive local politics: A newly elected Muslim mayor in a heavily Jewish area during the devastating war in Gaza and the continued uncertainty about Israeli hostages. Those heated politics have been on display nationally and locally this year, with the Minneapolis City Council passing a symbolic ceasefire resolution in January and a resolution this month expressing solidarity with pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Minnesota.

Yet St. Louis Park residents say the main story of the first year of America’s first elected Somali American mayor is that it hasn’t been a story.

Instead of wading into the heated waters of international politics, her time has been spent on the daily duties of being mayor: Debating water quality improvement projects or traffic control changes, adopting a cannabis zoning ordinance and an inclusionary housing policy, riding along with police on National Night Out and appearing at a Fire Department open house, recording a video for a second-grade class on what it’s like to be one of the youngest mayors in the state. And doing all that while working her full-time job as a trainer for social workers in the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families.

Mohamed’s political philosophy centers on bridge-building: Valuing relationships over political grandstanding, knowing what her role as mayor is — and isn’t.

Earlier this year for Yom Kippur, Mohamed accompanied Steve Hunegs to the evening Kol Nidre service at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park. Hunegs, whose family has lived in St. Louis Park for three generations and who leads the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, explained the service to her. The two compared elements of Judaism and Islam. Congregants appreciated her presence, Hunegs said, especially on Judaism’s holiest holiday, which fell just after the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks.

“It’s like Neil Armstrong, one small step meaning something much larger for mankind,” Hunegs said. “She sees her mayoral position as reaching out to all communities, reaching out to houses of worship and where people gather, and showing she cares about all her constituents. Mayor Mohamed is in the business of fostering friendship and support in the community, not trading in antagonism.”

When Mohamed was 6, her family left Somalia and its civil war for Kenya. Her parents shielded her from war, but something else fearful was going on: Her younger brother, Abdalla, was epileptic and autistic, suffering from daily seizures. The seizures caused permanent brain damage and developmental delays. Some thought he was possessed by a demon. Her parents saw America as the best place for him. Mohamed’s father got a job at a computer chip assembly factory in Arden Hills, and in 2007, the family — Mohamed, her mother and her four siblings — joined him in Minnesota, seven people in a two-bedroom apartment in St. Louis Park.

She was in fifth grade with no grasp of English. The morning after arriving in America, she went to Cub Foods. She was used to milk delivered in a bag. Here, she was amazed at rows of refrigerated cases and never-ending cereal options. Cocoa Puffs was a revelation.

Growing up, Mohamed was ashamed of using social services - visiting the food shelf, helping her mom deliver rent for subsidized housing. Now, she says, government and charitable programs helped get her where she is today.

That experience formed her political philosophy.

“It sounds cliché and corny, but if you invest in people who want to come here, there will be success stories,” she said. “I relied on social services to get where I am - housing, our first bikes, food, our first winter jackets. When people talk about social services, they rarely talk about the stories behind them. I want people to hear stories.”

Part of Mohamed’s experience as a refugee and an immigrant is seeing America in full. She sees the historic and ongoing struggles of people of color in this country, sees the impact of projections of Western power abroad, like the destruction wrought by proxy wars like the one fought between Somalia and Ethiopia. She’s experienced racism firsthand, like when a man at a Wisconsin rest stop shouted at her family to go back to where they came from. She sees America’s flaws, yet she remains proud of being American: “I wouldn’t be who I am today had it not been for America,” she said. She brings that same nuanced view to her work as mayor.

Lee-Ann Stephens, a culturally relevant literacy coach in St. Louis Park schools, got to know Mohamed through a high-achiever program for students of color that Stephens ran for high schoolers. There, a more assertive version of Mohamed blossomed. Later, while serving as her brother’s primary caretaker by day and taking classes at Metro State by night, she joined a cultural advisory committee for St. Louis Park police. It was her entrée into politics.

“She has a level of maturity I don’t see in people twice her age,” Stephens said. “At a young age I could see that leadership, that take-charge attitude from her, not in a way that would usurp anyone’s authority but what’s it like to partner with you as a peer.”

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After last year’s Hamas attacks sparked a still-spiraling war in the Middle East, Mohamed considered how to address those emotions in her campaign and later as mayor.

After securing the endorsement of the city’s previous mayor, Mohamed beat retired banker Dale Anderson by nearly 17 percentage points. She pledged to be authentic, not performative, focusing on concrete things like ensuring police presence at synagogues during a time of increased antisemitism. Just this week, two swastikas were found spray-painted outside the entrance of Minnesota’s largest synagogue, Temple Israel in Minneapolis.

St. Louis Park recently got its first police dog, trained in bomb-sniffing, as a reaction to the increased tensions.

“I realized what people need from you are the real things,” Mohamed said. “What they want is their snow to be plowed on time, their roads to be safe, their water to be drinkable and their houses to be affordable. You gotta get those main things.”

Jewish leaders here have appreciated how Mohamed has focused on local issues.

“She rightly recognizes it’s one thing to be there in a supportive, caring sense for the Jewish community or any community that’s hurting, but international politics don’t really have a place when it comes to St. Louis Park issues,” said Alexander Davis, senior rabbi at Beth El Synagogue. “St. Louis Park City Council hasn’t made any pronouncements that could have been very hurtful and damaging and at the end of the day don’t move the dial one bit on what’s happening in the Middle East. She’s wise to steer clear of that.”

Davis sees wisdom in Mohamed seeking commonality between Minnesota’s Jews and Somali refugees: one people who escaped pogroms, the other who escaped war. A wariness about not always feeling welcome. The challenges of maintaining faith and tradition against the pressures of assimilation.

In her old high school stomping grounds, Mohamed paused next to a trophy case for the school’s Nordic ski team. She was thrilled to notice a small, meaningful change - a dedicated prayer room space for Muslim students.

“We used to fight for that, tooth and nail!” she exclaimed. “Some bad apples would use it to skip class, so it would be taken away, and we’d have to come back and fight for it again.”

A central part of Mohamed’s journey to becoming American was finding solidarity with St. Louis Park’s Jewish community. In high school, she never wanted to look like an immigrant or a refugee. She never told people she knew another language. But as a hijab-wearing Muslim, she couldn’t hide. She found comfort seeing Jewish people, especially Orthodox Jews, who were just as visible in their identities. She took solace in seeing Jews proudly wearing yarmulkes or prayer shawls, in seeing them walking to synagogue on the sabbath.

“Being able to connect with them at that level, to say, ‘I feel you’ — I found comfort in that growing up,” Mohamed said. “They saw me as a person, and I saw them as people too. Seeing them having pride in wearing their garments and being their authentic selves. You find comfort in that as a child: ‘They’re different. I can be different.’”