Don Samuels has had it up to here, and he’s running for Congress

If you’ve ever chatted with Don Samuels about his north Minneapolis neighborhood, you’d think he didn’t like it all that much.

Apartments are in disrepair, and black mold has sickened children in the neighborhood. Lead paint is still abundant. Gang leaders have frequented his front lawn. He’s called the city of Minneapolis about 20 times on his neighbor, who seems to be running an off-the-books auto repair shop featuring dilapidated car parts on their lawn.

But it’s not the neighbors who bother Samuels. It’s the elected officials who he says have failed him and the community. Samuels recently sued Minneapolis, alleging the city discriminates against his neighborhood by inequitably enforcing the housing code.

“When someone has poor constituent service, it just pisses me off because we have a council member … We have police. We have a governor. We have a mayor,” Samuels said in a recent interview. “We vote and we get inferior services and resources.”

Samuels, a former Minneapolis City Council member, said that’s why he’s taking another run against Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, whom he accuses of chasing international fame while the needs of the district go unmet. 

Samuels nearly upset Omar in 2022, losing by just 2 percentage points. 

Omar and Samuels will be on the ballot again in the August primary, which will likely decide who will be the next representative in the indigo 5th Congressional District.

Samuels says this year he will win, because two years ago he only campaigned for four-and-a-half months.

This time around, Samuels is going to Democratic-Farmer-Labor conventions — some of which he missed in 2022. Omar and Samuels will duke it out at the district’s endorsing convention on Saturday. Even if he loses the endorsement, Samuels said he will win the primary.

A pro-police Democrat

Samuels, 74, spent a decade representing north Minneapolis on the City Council, unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2013 and then served a term on the school board. He’s an ordained Baptist minister who immigrated here from Jamaica. 

Samuels has frequently aligned himself with the police, even as his successors on the City Council announced a campaign to defund and abolish the Minneapolis Police Department. He appeared frequently on Fox News after George Floyd’s murder during the height of the abolish/defund police movement that coincided with a spike in crime. He also sued Minneapolis in an attempt to force the city to hire more police officers.

Members of Congress have limited influence when it comes to crime control. Local police investigate and arrest, county attorneys prosecute, and the state Legislature writes most of the criminal statutes. 

Still, Samuels says, in neighborhoods like his, “crime still resonates, I know. Maybe the press is a little tired of it, but people are still afraid. When I speak about crime, I speak with confidence, and I know the nuances of it. My opponent, really, is naive on those things.” 

Omar endorsed a 2021 ballot initiative that would have given the City Council authority over the police department and was widely viewed as an effort at wholesale change. Samuels campaigned against the measure and for the reelection of Mayor Jacob Frey, and he won on both counts.

Samuels’ campaign is again being run by Joe Radinovich, who is Frey’s close political adviser. Frey endorsed Samuels in 2022 with a classically Minnesotan passive-aggressive attack on Omar: 

“As our city and nation navigate great challenges, we need partners across all levels of government who prioritize teamwork, collaboration, and a seriousness of approach to match the seriousness of the issues we face,” Frey said in a statement.

On most other issues, Samuels and Omar agree. Like Omar, Samuels has called for a cease-fire in the current conflict between Israel and Gaza. Samuels said the U.S. should no longer supply Israel weapons without conditions.

“The world has to say ‘Stop,’ and the hostages have to be returned,” Samuels said.

It’s doubtful, however, that people in the 5th District think Samuels is going to be a leading voice on international relations. His campaign is an argument about priorities, and he thinks Omar’s are misplaced and not focused enough on the people in the district. 

He’s a traditional Democrat — he believes the U.S. should take bold measures to combat climate change, expand programs that forgive student debt and better support immigrants. 

“The fact that people from all over the world want to immigrate here is a strength, not a weakness,” Samuels says on his campaign website. “Immigration is a crucial strength of the nation, and rather than turning on immigration in general, we must turn against our current broken immigration system.”

Omar’s allies have sought to portray him as wobbly on abortion, but Samuels says he’s in favor of codifying abortion rights into federal law and assisting people who need to travel to another state to get an abortion.

Unfortunate sound bites 

Samuels has long tried to differentiate himself from Omar by promising he’d avoid the kinds of Washington online dustups that have been frequent throughout Omar’s five-and-a-half years in office. 

If voters want someone who doesn’t make news, however, they’re looking in the wrong place. 

There was the time he called the cops on Neighborhoods Organizing for Change when they were giving away hot dogs during a get-out-the-vote event. 

And the time when he was on the City Council and he used an impolitic remark to express frustration with education inequities: “I’ve said burn North High School down!”

More recently, during an interview with Michael Brodkorb and Becky Scherr — local GOP operatives turned podcasters — Scherr asked Samuels to expand on his criticism of Omar holding too few town halls and being disconnected from her constituents.

“To not be responsive and available to those people, to meet with them and find out what their concerns are and to answer their tough questions?” Samuels said on the podcast. “To not get back to people on the phone? Who do you think you are? And who do you think you’re working for? You’re not cute enough, you don’t dress well enough, nothing about you is attractive enough to overcome that deficit.”

Samuels now says he was using “you” as a collective noun to describe politicians as a whole, not to single out Omar.

After the Reformer asked Samuels about the “you’re not cute” comment, Samuels grew animated.

He began to raise his voice while listing off the problems plaguing him and his neighbors. He showed the Reformer a group chat with his neighbors about the problems in the community, returning again to the house with the broken-down car on its front lawn.

“That statement was not just some kind of political thing that, you know, ‘Oh, Don is against Ilhan.’ It’s like, I am against all politicians who refuse to serve us, give us crappy service and then tell us ‘Black Lives Matter’ and tell us that ‘We’re gonna get rid of the police for you,’” Samuels said. “Just get rid of the car on the lot, will you! And stop using catchphrases.”

At this point, Radinovich interjected and said to keep the conversation moving.

In August 2020, Samuels and his wife Sondra Samuels, who is CEO of the Northside Achievement Zone, were supervising some local kids and took them on a bike ride to Boom Island. A six-year old boy tragically drowned. 

Briana Rose Lee, an Omar campaign staffer and former Minneapolis DFL party chair, in 2022 questioned whether Samuels should hold office because of the accidental death. Samuels responded in a tweet “Can’t swim but can govern,” which was panned for being a glib response to the tragedy. 

Sondra Samuels’ insurance paid the child’s family over $300,000.

Samuels quickly deleted the tweet and apologized at the time. He said during the Reformer interview he was “shocked” when people thought he was being flippant about the child’s death. The day the child drowned was the worst day of his life, he said.

“It was a response of outrage, as in, what does this have to do with political leadership? That was what that response was all about. What the hell did that have to do with me being a congressperson or governing?” Samuels said. “It was even more painful, because I can’t swim, which is kind of a class thing. I grew up in Jamaica. I can’t swim … I was shocked that it was interpreted as flippant.”

Samuels said he and his wife spend thousands of hours mentoring and tutoring kids who need it most.  

If Don Samuels occasionally seems like a man who would like you to get off his lawn — or to get your car parts off your lawn — don’t be fooled, he says. He aims to inject positivity into the nation’s rancorous politics.

“I think that policies are great and important, but the thing that’s tearing our country apart is relationships,” he said.