Who is funding Don Samuels’ campaign? And why?

On July 20, the Star Tribune published an article indicating that Don Samuels had raised more funds than Congresswoman Ilhan Omar in his bid to unseat her.

The information can be found at www.opensecrets.org, which is a nonpartisan website that gets its information from FEC filings.

For those who want to check my own confirmation bias, I will say right away that I expected Samuels’ campaign donors to be heavily wealthy, establishment Democrats, while those donating to Congresswoman Omar would be heavily unions and more progressive groups.

I found that to be quite true again, just as it was in the Antone Melton-Meaux challenge two years ago. The main difference I found was that the visible Melton-Meaux money was obviously from demonstrable Islamaphobe sources, whereas I have not yet found that with Samuels’ money.

In other words, most of my confirmation bias proved out. Challenges to Omar spring mostly from a desire to silence her voice in Congress. Some are Republicans. Some are corporate Democrats. In the case of Melton-Meaux, quite a few were really right-wing Zionists who often donate to Republicans but sometimes to Democrats as well. 

 I didn’t see this last with the Samuels donors, but that may be that they already accomplished their smears two years ago, by pulling Omar’s statements out of context or merely fabricating them, attempting to paint the Congresswoman as anti-Semitic.

Getting into the weeds somewhat, here is what I found of the top Samuels donors:

• Doran Companies, a huge local construction company
• David McClennan, wealthy Cargill CEO
• Unity Avenue Associates, plumbing and heating services
• Ravich Meyer, real estate law and lobby firm
• Goldman Sachs ($50 B in revenue), revolving door with govt, support of dictatorships overseas, heavy Republican donor, plus “Democrat” Kyrsten Sinema
• Allen Lanzmeier ($53 M compensation last year), American Telecare Exec
• Marquette Companies LLC (the Pohlad holding company)
• Minnesota Twins, owned by Pohlad’s
• Hylden Advocates, law and lobbying, previous Melton-Meaux donor)
• Accenture ($51 B in 2021 revenue), business strategy and lobbying
• Askov Findlayson, high-end parkas
• Bank of America (#2 bank in the US, #8 in world, $89 B revenues), accusations of insider trading with Parlamat, consumer credit issues, insurance kickbacks, coal mining investment, etc.

 My bottom-line: We are going to see this sort of funding by Republicans and corporate Democrats, motivated by a strong desire to silence a strong progressive voice in Congress, that of Ilhan Omar.

I want to be very clear that I intend absolutely no smear of Don Samuels himself. My point is that right-wing and monied Democratic sectors are using him to unseat Congresswoman Omar.  

I believe they have chosen yet another fundamentally honorable and religious Black Democrat to hide their fundamental intent, silencing a progressive voice.

Charles Underwood lives in the Twin Cities.