Supporters of Mohamud Noor’s bid for a state House seat cheered as he spoke Wednesday night at Coffman Memorial Union, the site of a makeup DFL caucus (Photo: RENÉE JONES SCHNEIDER).
By Eric Roper
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Two weeks after a political caucus erupted into chaos, the Somali-American community in Minneapolis gathered for a chance to repair a public image many had felt was tarnished by the violent scuffle.
Private security officers and professional translators milled about the crowd of about 700 people at Coffman Memorial Union at the University of Minnesota Wednesday as 421 registered participants elected delegates in the intraparty battle between longtime state Rep. Phyllis Kahn and challenger Mohamud Noor. Noor decided to run against Kahn soon after being appointed to the Minneapolis school board.
The first caucus, at the Brian Coyle Community Center earlier this month, ended in violence after divided activists came to blows over who could neutrally oversee the event. At least one person, City Council aide Ilhan Omar, was injured.
“We have come too far together to destroy the reputation it took thousands of people many years to build,” former Mayor R.T. Rybak, one of the evening’s neutral conveners, told the crowd. “We cannot destroy what you have built. Tonight must be different.”
Due to space constraints at the community center, the state DFL moved the event across the river. This required buses to take the participants — many of them elderly women — to the new location.
State DFL chair Ken Martin said that the campaign for Kahn’s seat is not an especially large priority for the party, considering that the liberal district is a bastion of DFL support. But the party nonetheless spent about $5,000 on the caucus do-over.
“The reason we’re doing this is because it’s larger than just this one precinct,” Martin said. “It’s really about what kind of message we’re sending to immigrant communities and to the Somali-American community about their participation in this process. We value their participation.”
Although the crowd at Wednesday night’s event appeared highly supportive of Noor, it represented only one of 12 precincts in the House district — the rest elected delegates on Feb. 4. Kahn’s district also covers the University of Minnesota campus, the central riverfront and a wide swath of southeast Minneapolis.
The disrupted caucus ended before it could elect 43 of the House district’s 381 delegates. Those delegates elected on Wednesday night will help endorse a candidate at the party’s district convention.
The endorsing convention takes place in April.
Making choices
Abdalaziz Abdisalam Mohamed said Noor would bring new ideas to the office. He said the violence on Feb. 4 was devastating. “It damaged my community’s reputation. And also it damaged the practice of democracy,” Mohamed said. “I was actually mad.”
Fadumo Yusuf said she supports Noor largely because of his statements on education. “He knows our culture and he speaks our language and he understands what we need,” Yusuf said.
Others said there was no reason to reject Kahn.
“She has done a lot of work for the community … and is somebody we can approach, we can talk to,” said Weli Hassan, a Kahn supporter who added that “it’s difficult to tell where [Noor] stands.”
The campaign has exposed tensions within the community, which has become a major political force in local Minneapolis politics. The highest-ranked Somali-American politician in Minnesota, new Minneapolis City Council Member Abdi Warsame, has thrown his support behind Kahn.