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.
“He is someone who reminds me of Mamdani, someone who’s just a natural. He can gather a crowd, and has that natural charisma,” said Angela Romero, the minority leader of the Utah state House. “There’s a community here in Utah that people just don’t think exists and Liban represents that to me.”
Mohamed said New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is among the people that motivated him to run.
“I saw somebody like himself, who was young, who was so brilliant, and the way that he was able to inspire not only myself, but communities across the nation and around the world, for young people to rise up and lead” he said. “I hope that I can extend that inspiration.”
The Democratic primary for the 1st District is on June 23 and will ultimately showcase whether Mohamed will be successful in turning the “hope” he said he has spread across the region into votes. Despite his growing prominence among the district’s electorate, his victory is far from a given.
As a former mayor and congressman, McAdams benefits from high name ID, as well as a resume he argued makes him uniquely positioned to serve in Congress while navigating Trump’s White House.
“When I was in office before, I represented the most Republican district in the country the Democrats held and I voted to impeach Donald Trump. I knew at the time it would probably cost me my reelection,” McAdams told MS NOW. “In this moment we have a district that is not gerrymandered and Utah Democrats can actually have a voice. They can have a representative who, as I’ve done before, stands up on their behalf.”
Meanwhile, Blouin circulated a poll commissioned by his campaign that suggested he is the strongest progressive candidate to take on McAdams. He has since called on the three other progressives in the race to drop out and consolidate their support behind him.
“I don’t want to see a situation where we split the vote in several different ways and lose a seat that should otherwise be a progressive seat,” Blouin told MS NOW.
Mohamed agreed that consolidation would boost the likelihood of progressives emerging as the victor in the race, but he disputed which candidate should remain in the race.
“If there is to be consolidation, it should be behind us,” Mohamed said, pointing to his convention performance. “Nonetheless, we still have a very clear path. There’s four candidates in this race, but forget not. Our marginalized communities have not turned out to vote in the capacity they could traditionally because they’ve never gotten to see themselves in the process.”
Regardless of the race’s outcome, the 27-year-old remains hopeful that his campaign will “leave a mark” on Democratic politics as the party navigates its future.
“The Democratic party should look like the communities they advocate for. We do not need any more virtue signalers. What we need is people from those communities, who are facing those struggles, spreading the message of what the solutions should be,” he said.
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