SALT LAKE CITY — President Donald Trump’s attacks on Somalis throughout his second term have bred political activism nationwide, including in Salt Lake City, Utah, where a 27-year-old progressive is campaigning to become the first Somali American muslim to represent the state in Congress.
Liban Mohamed made the decision to enter Utah’s competitive 1st Congressional District race in November as Trump intensely targeted Somalis in Minnesota, deriding the community of nearly 100,000 as “garbage” and “crooks” after several dozen — less than 1% of the state’s Somali population — were indicted for fraud. Mohamed turned those attacks into fuel.
“As a Somali American, as a Muslim man, as a black man, as a young person in this current climate, I have an intersection of identities to me that are targets of this MAGA movement of President Donald Trump, and honestly, when it comes to the Somali American community, it’s like the diva within him can’t stand that we are resilient people, that we will rise up and fight back,” Mohamed told MS NOW.
Political conditions in Utah are ripe for Mohamed — and Democrats in general — to fight back. For the first time in roughly eight years, Utah could add a Democrat to its congressional delegation after a yearslong legal fight over a previously gerrymandered map resulted in the state court forcing the Republican controlled legislature to adopt new congressional boundaries. That new map created a congressional district around Salt Lake City, shifting Utah’s 1st District from leaning red to now being 17 points more Democratic than the national average.
Those new district lines have attracted a slew of Democratic candidates, including former Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, the last Democrat to represent Utah in Congress, and progressives Nate Blouin, a state senator; Michael Farrell, a tax attorney; and Mohamed, who worked as a public policy adviser for TikTok and Meta before transitioning into politics.
The influx of Democratic hopefuls creates an uphill battle for Mohamed, who sits near the back of the pack according to polls commissioned by Blouin ahead of the June 23 primary.
But still, Mohamed’s run follows a number of wider battles playing out on the national stage: the progressive push against the centrist Democratic establishment, and efforts to secure more Muslim and Somali representation in Congress. If elected, Mohamed would join Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota as the second Somali representative. Omar has already endorsed his campaign.
And like Omar, Mohamed said his pursuit for office has come packaged with a slew of threats that he argued are in part the result of Trump’s sustained targeting of the community.
“When I announced my campaign, within just the first 24 hours, there were over 40,000 anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, racist attack posts about us. Hundreds of death threats. I think a lot of people were scared, shocked that a Somali-American, 27-year-old Muslim in Utah of all places would have the audacity to think he belongs in the United States Congress,” he said.
His father encouraged his pursuit for office, Mohamed said, but his mother was worried.
“She knew this climate and sentiment out there. As a mother would, she was fearful of the rhetoric that I would face, but I told my mom, the weakest thing for us to do is not to stand up and show who we are and what we care about,” he said.
Beyond offering representation in a state party that has never sent a person of color to Congress, Utah Democrats, including Mohamed’s opponents, see his run as potentially mobilizing the city’s growing immigrant population. According to census data, more than 30% of the city’s population is composed of communities of color.
“There’s a lot of misconceptions about Salt Lake,” said Jade Velazquez, the executive director of the Utah Democratic Party. “Salt Lake City proper is very progressive and there’s a lot of different kinds of people here. The LDS faith actually brings in a lot of immigrant communities. This is a very refugee-friendly community.”
The opportunity to elect a Democrat for the first time in nearly a decade has raised questions among Utah Democrats over who that representative should be: A centrist or a progressive? A seasoned legislator or a political outsider? Mohamed argued the candidate should be a proven coalition builder that reflects the state’s growing minority population.
Since 2010, nearly 40% of Utah’s growth statewide is attributable to increases in racial and ethnic minority populations, according to a report by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
At the Utah Democratic Convention in April, Mohamed landed an upset after garnering the most delegate votes, narrowly besting McAdams to land a spot on the congressional ballot. Mohamed pointed to that result as proof of his ability to build and mobilize a voter base that centers communities of color.
“We won 51% of the vote in that convention, with 700 delegates showing up from every single different neighborhood across this entire district,” he said. “This is a moment, a moment that we can uniquely meet by expanding the electorate, making it something inspiring, and whether there are multiple candidates in the race or not, we’re going to consolidate the votes themselves, because we are what voters are looking for, which is hope.”
It’s a message that echoes another progressive that Mohamed’s allies often liken him to.