Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Ilhan Omar ‘one of the greatest people I know’: Sanders at Super Tuesday rally

Sen. Bernie Sanders campaigned with Rep. Ilhan Omar in Virginia on Saturday, where the presidential candidate called the controversial congresswoman “one of the greatest people I know,” Patch reported.

The two of them will also be campaigning together in Minnesota on Monday night.

Virginia is one of the 15 states and territories that will be voting on Super Tuesday, as are Sanders and Omar’s respective home states of Vermont and Minnesota. Speaking at the rally in Springfield, Va., Omar predicted a Super Tuesday victory. “We are going to win because we are building a movement that is multiracial, multi-generational, multi-ethnic, multi-religious,” she said.

After her fulsome introduction of him, Sanders joked, “I don’t know what I can say that Ilhan hasn’t already said. So I’m going home.”

Omar was accused of anti-Semitism last February after she claimed that the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC paid politicians to be pro-Israel (AIPAC does not donate to candidates but its members do). Sanders defended her during a Fox News town hall two months later, saying that she wasn’t anti-Semitic but had to do a “better job in speaking to the Jewish community.”

At the time, he also said that he had only talked to her twice ever, but since then, the two have grown closer. Omar was the third member of Congress to endorse him, doing so in October, and the two subsequently appeared together at a rally in Minnesota the following month, where Omar, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, said she was “proud to stand with the son of a Jewish refugee who survived genocide.”

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.