Betty McCollum

A primary challenger to Rep. Betty McCollum raised more than $300,000 in the fourth quarter of 2021, marking the first major bid to unseat the Minnesota Democrat in her 21-year tenure in Congress. The challenge to McCollum comes from Amane Badhasso, a Democratic organizer and operative who arrived in Minnesota, like many others in the Twin Cities, as a refugee from Kenya, having been forced out of her home country of Ethiopia. McCollum has been a reliable vote for House Democrats and a leader on the question of Palestinian rights, but she otherwise has largely kept a low profile and declined to join the Congressional Progressive Caucus. In an interview, Badhasso said she would raise few if any substantive objections to McCollum’s voting record. Badhasso said that she has long applauded McCollum’s advocacy on behalf of Palestinians but that the representative hadn’t done enough broadly. “I’m not challenging her on the basis of that,” she said. “There’s so much more that we need to do. We can’t just be a champion on one issue.” Rather, Badhasso said, she was making the case that there is more to adequate representation than voting the right way. “Here in the progressive movement, we have to think about what ‘Democrat’ actually means beyond just who votes along a certain line,” she said. “Frankly, we need a leadership that just gives a damn about folks in the community.”

McCollum’s Middle East activism has failed to draw much national attention. A recent profile of her in HuffPost was subheadlined, “St. Paul’s Betty McCollum is radically progressive on U.S. policy toward Israel. Why don’t you ever hear about it?” Though she aligns on many issues with Rep. Ilhan Omar, she and her fellow Twin Cities lawmaker have at times betrayed a frosty relationship. “Ilhan is on the other side of the Mississippi River, and we talk sometimes in the break room in between votes,” McCollum told HuffPost. When Omar was in the barrel over remarks in 2019 that critics deemed antisemitic, McCollum issued a statement: “Rep. Omar has the right to speak freely, and she also must take responsibility for the effect her words have on her colleagues, her constituents, and the policies Democrats seek to advance.” McCollum’s chief of staff, Bill Harper, went further, telling HuffPost: “My own take on it is that she really derailed a lot of our work.”

Omar has not endorsed in the race and has collaborated on legislation with McCollum, but she had warm words for Badhasso. “She truly is one of the most impressive people I have ever met. She is incredible, and I have never met anyone who disagrees in [the] decade I have known her,” she told The Intercept. Harper said that McCollum is taking the challenge seriously and is unwilling to cede the mantle of progressivism to Badhasso. “She’s the most progressive member of the Minnesota delegation,” Harper said of McCollum. Asked if that ranking included Omar, he said that it did, citing McCollum’s vote for the major infrastructure bill in November, which Omar opposed. (Omar opposed voting on the bill until the Senate had fully committed to passing the Build Back Better Act.) “Change just simply for change’s sake is just shuffling the deck chairs. In Congress, seniority matters. The question I have to ask is why would progressives … want to throw away 22 years of seniority,” Harper added. Badhasso’s challenge will be a window into how Democratic voters are viewing 2022: whether as a moment to push forward with an outspoken and unapologetic brand of progressivism and continue the fight for control of the party or focus more on defending against surging Republican energy, which threatens to seize the House and Senate.

Badhasso’s challenge will be a window into how Democratic voters are viewing 2022.