Tag Archives: CD 04

Primary Election 2026: US House, District 4

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This is the seat currently held by Betty McCollum. On the DFL side of the ballot:

Betty McCollum
Aswar Rahman

On the Republican side:

Gene Rechtzigel
Paul Wikstrom
Paul Xiong

(Minnesota doesn’t require you to register as a party member to vote in primaries, but in any given primary, you have to pick one party and stick with it throughout. My friends who work as election judges have people who want to litigate this every single time. If you vote in more than one party’s races, you have spoiled your ballot.)

I live in St. Paul, so Betty McCollum is my US House Rep. She’s in the progressive wing of the Democratic party but is not as fighty as some of the other people in that part of the party (like Ilhan) if that makes sense. For example, she’s a long-standing critic of Israel (she’s literally one of the longest-standing supporters of Palestinian human rights in Congress) but sticks with moderate language while talking about Israel’s war crimes (she prefers the term “human rights abuses”).

My personal recent frustrations with Betty: she voted last week for the KIDS Act, which is an Internet censorship / age-verification bill. (There are a lot of problems with age-verification bills; one is that they’re basically data-exposure bills.) She voted last month for the “Combating Organized Retail Crime Act” bill, which expands the criteria where shoplifting can be federally prosecuted. (This bill is 100% a response to the claim that we’re in an “organized retail theft epidemic” which is just horseshit. Or possibly it’s 50% that, 50% an opportunity for the Feds to increase surveillance. Both are bad!) She’s a Democrat in a safe seat and did not have to vote for these.

Anyway, if you’re here because you are mad about these votes (or other things she’s done) and you want to cast a protest vote, and you just want to know if Aswar Rahman is evil: no, he’s not evil, you can totally vote for him if you want. ETA: HEY FRIENDS I’M BACK THREE DAYS AFTER I POSTED WITH SOME EXCITING NEW INFORMATION.

So there’s a lot I am going to need to add, but I’m just going to drop in a screen shot of the flyer his campaign apparently sent out last year.

A photo of a flyer. On the left side it says, "Aswar Rahman is challenging anti-Israel Rep. Betty McCollum in the MN CD4 Democratic Primary" and there's a photo of him in tie and vest. On the right side it says, "I need your help to defeat the most anti-Israel Democrat in Congress. My name is Aswar Rahman. I am a Minnesota Democrat, a businessman, a humanitarian serving Ukraine, and Betty McCollum's primary opponent. She's a 20-year incumbent of MN's 4th District who: * spent decades trying to restrict US aid to Israel, * branded supporters of the US-Israel alliance as members of "hate groups," * led the charge to deny Ukrainians the weapons they need to defend themselves and win the fight. It's time for McCollum to go. If you help me, I will defeat her in the Democratic primary, and be a champion for America's democratic allies.

Needless to say, nothing like this is on his website now. (He now has the following, under Gaza: “I strongly support halting arms supplies to Israel, mandating war crimes investigations for the Netanyahu regime, and replacing the corrupt ‘Board of Peace’ with a UN-led coalition to path the way for democratic elections and Palestinian statehood.”

Anyway I’m putting that up top because honestly, that’s all a lot of people will need to know. You can stop reading and go vote for Betty (or, if you’re Team Israel, for Aswar.) I’ll be back with more edits in a bit, I’m now returning you to the original post and also nesting it under a cut for the convenience of people scrolling my site; this got long.

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