Dalia al-Aqidi is a Muslim Iraqi refugee who says she’s tired of hearing Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., play identity politics while using language she believes is “dividing” America.
So she is launching a campaign to unseat her in November.
Al-Aqidi, who discussed her newly launched campaign in an interview with Fox News, joins a growing field of Republicans looking to take on Omar. “She needs to be stopped,” al-Aqidi told Fox News in a phone interview. “I truly believe that I’m strong enough to beat her at her own game.”
She explained that in a race between the two of them, Omar would be limited in using her background as a Muslim woman who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia to distinguish them — because they are “basically the same” in that backstory, she said.
Al-Aqidi decried the use of identity politics on the campaign trail.
“Muslims, Christians, Jews are all Americans,” she said, while going on to blast Omar’s past comments that have been labeled anti-Semitic.
“Every time she opens her mouth she says something either anti-U.S. or anti-Semitic,” al-Aqidi said. Omar has apologized for past tweets about Israel that played on anti-Semitic tropes. – READ MORE