Betty McCollum jumps off to big early lead in CD4 primary

Bill Salisbury, Pioneer Press
·2 min read
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U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum jumped off to a big early lead over challenger Amane Badhasso Tuesday evening in the 4th Congressional District DFL primary election.

With 11 of 212 precincts reporting, the 22-year congresswoman from St. Paul had received 89 percent of the vote to Badhasso’s 10 percent. Fasil Moghul is also on the DFL ballot.

The 4th District covers Ramsey and most of Washington counties. The district was only slightly changed as part of the once-a-decade process of drawing new boundaries following the census.

After winning her first congressional primary in a hotly contested 2000 race for an open seat, McCollum has defeated primary challengers in five contested races with an average of 88 percent of the vote, and she went unchallenged in five other primaries.

This year, however, she faced her best-funded DFL opponent yet. As of July 20, Badhasso, a 32-year-old St. Paul community organizer, Democratic operative and former refugee born in Ethiopia, had raised $828,000 and spent $627,000 on her campaign to unseat McCollum. The incumbent had raised $1.7 million and spent $1.3 million through that period.

DFL-endorsed McCollum, 67, is one of the more progressive members of the U.S. House, but Badhasso accused her of not being progressive enough. She asserted that although the congresswoman supports Medicare for all and the “green new deal,” she didn’t fight hard enough for those causes, and she is beholden to big-industry special interest groups that made large contributions to her campaign.

An influential leader in the House Democratic majority, McCollum is dean of the Minnesota congressional delegation and a close ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She chairs a powerful defense appropriations subcommittee and has delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants for projects in her district.

If re-elected, McCollum said her top priorities would be to use her post on the Appropriations Committee to ensure that federal funding and programs benefit her East Metro constituents. She pledged to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits and to work for access to affordable, quality health care for all Minnesotans.

If she wins the DFL primary, McCollum will face the winner of a three-way Republican primary election. GOP-endorsed May Lor Xiong is being challenged by Gene Rechtzigel and Jerry Silver. Xiong had a narrow lead over Silver in the early voting.

The district hasn’t elected a Republican in 74 years.

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