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Inside the “Zionists for Don Samuels” WhatsApp Group Raising Big Money to Oust Ilhan Omar
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| Contributor | E Pluribus Unum |
| Last Edited | E Pluribus Unum Aug 11, 2024 03:07pm |
| Category | News |
| News Date | Aug 11, 2024 01:15pm |
| Description | Members of a WhatsApp group founded by wealthy pro-Israel donors coordinated to infuse last-minute cash into Don Samuels’s primary race against Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.
The members of the group — which included a consultant who at the time was working for the Samuels campaign as well as far-flung political donors — discussed raising six-figure sums for a political action committee, strategies for campaign phone banks, and an effort to marshal Republican voters to boost Samuels in Tuesday’s open primary.
“Hi Everybody, My Name is Alexander Minn, I work for the campaign,” Alex Minn, the campaign consultant, wrote to the group on July 24. “WE ALL HAVE THE POWER TO HELP GET RID OF ~the squad~ AND PUBLIC ENEMY #1 TO JEWS, ISRAEL, AND AMERICA- ~ilhan omar~” (Samuels campaign manager Joe Radinovich said on Saturday that Minn no longer works for the campaign. An August 4 episode of a YouTube show featuring Samuels included Minn as a campaign staffer.)
While national pro-Israel groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have not come out swinging in the Samuels–Omar race, a far-flung, group of disparate activists are using the WhatsApp group, called “Zionists for Don Samuels Against Ilhan Omar,” to fill the gap.
Samuels lost to Omar by just 2 percentage points in 2022 in a showdown largely focused on policing.
This year, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has become the focus of outside spending in Democratic primaries. In recent years, AIPAC formed a pair of political action committees that have poured more than $25 million into defeating two Black incumbent Democrats, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y. |
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