Last-Minute DeLauro Challenger Seeks Pro-Palestine Vote

A 23-year-old University of New Haven student with Palestinian roots is mounting a last-minute write-in campaign for Congress to protest the Democratic Party’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

That newest of U.S. House of Representatives candidates is Shahd Omar.

Her candidacy marks the latest example this election season of pro-Palestine activists calling out Democrats for not doing enough to protect Palestinian civilian lives during Israel’s war in Gaza following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. 

In a Thursday evening press release, a group called Justice for Palestine in Congress announced that Omar, who lives in West Haven, will be running a write-in campaign for the Third Congressional District seat.

She’s challenging 17-term incumbent Rosa DeLauro, one of the highest ranking Democrats in Congress. Also running is Republican and Independent Party candidate Michael Massey.

“Two Palestinian citizens of Connecticut are running for Congress to send a message to the Democrats and Republicans in power that the genocide of their people in Gaza is a red-line,” reads the first sentence of Thursday’s press release. 

That release announced not only Omar’s write-in candidacy, but also that of Ahmad Darwish, who is challenging incumbent Democrat Jahana Hayes and Republican George Logan in Connecticut’s Fifth Congressional District. 

The announcement comes less than two weeks before Election Day on Nov. 5. Early voting began on Oct. 21.

In a recent phone interview, Omar, who grew up in Watertown, recognized that she’s too young to actually serve in Congress. (The minimum age for the House of Representatives is 25.)

That isn’t stopping her from running an official write-in campaign; she’s duly filed her candidacy with the Secretary of the State’s office, as required for all write-in candidates. 

Omar said she’s the only member of her family to have been born in the United States. Her parents and siblings were born in the West Bank and in Jordan. 

“I proudly say I’m Palestinian. I have family who’s affected, friends who are quite literally watching their lineages wiped away,” she said about the last year of war. 

Omar studied criminal justice with a concentration in crime victim services and a minor in Arabic at UNH. She’s currently finishing up a few required courses for the degree that she received last semester, when she graduated. She said she recently worked as the campaign manager for Darwish’s ongoing run in the Fifth District; at UNH, she served as the vice president of the school’s Muslim Student Association, and spent a semester interning for fifth district incumbent Democrat Jahana Hayes.

She said that experience interning with Hayes inspired her with a love of government, and for the House of Representatives in particular. This is her first time running for any elected office.

Omar said she spent much of last year attending pro-Palestine campus protests, including at Yale. (She herself was never arrested.) ​“We’re constantly doing these protests in Connecticut, but nobody is really hearing us,” she said. Earlier this month, Trinity College arrested and charged more students for protesting on campus; those students were just ​“expressing their constitutional rights,” she said, and shouldn’t have been arrested.

Asked what she would do differently from DeLauro in regards to Israel and Palestine, Omar called for ​“divesting from our connections in Israel.” A lot of American money goes overseas, she said, and should instead be ​“reinvested in local communities.” She criticized DeLauro as generally being supportive of the U.S. government’s financial and military support for Israel, despite the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed over the past year.

While Omar said she is not a registered member of any political party, on Tuesday, she will be on a Zoom panel with other Green Party federal office candidates, including Connecticut U.S. Senate challenger Justin Paglino and presidential nominee Jill Stein.

Omar said that communication with her dad’s family members, who live in the West Bank, is ​“touch and go.” She said that the Israeli government will regularly ​“cut off their electricity,” making it difficult to communicate via Internet. She also recalled visiting the West Bank when she was in sixth grade, and being startled by just how visible and present symbols of Israeli occupation are: ​“being at the border, surrounded by all these guards with AKs, with very heavy military presence.” 

In a Monday afternoon phone interview, DeLauro welcomed Omar into the race for Congress. ​“If people want to run, that’s what our democracy is all about.”

She described herself as one of the ​“chief proponents of humanitarian assistance” for Palestinians over the course of the past year. She said she supports a ceasefire along with the return of the Israeli hostages. 

DeLauro said she recently visited Israel, Jordan and Egypt, and spoke with a diversity of people about the need for regional stability. America must find a way to help ensure Israeli security, she said, while ultimately paving the path for a separate Palestinian state.