In the hours after Wesley Bell’s upset victory over Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) last Tuesday, Don Samuels, a Democrat challenging Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), saw an influx of contributions to his underdog campaign.

By Friday morning, Samuels, a former Minneapolis councilman who came close to defeating Omar last election cycle, had raised nearly $160,000, he said, surpassing his total cash haul for most of July and lending his campaign a bit of momentum in the final few days of the race.

“The turn in sentiment against Ilhan Omar and toward me is stronger and stronger as the campaign goes on,” Samuels, 75, said in an interview with Jewish Insider last week. “People are looking for an alternative.”

The late surge in campaign contributions was no doubt fueled by a growing hope that Samuels will emerge on Tuesday as the third challenger of the cycle to unseat a Squad member — just a week after Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County, engineered his come-from-behind win against Bush, a two-term incumbent.

But while Samuels and his allies remain optimistic about his chances, strategists who have followed the primary are skeptical he can replicate Bell’s success, which came two months after Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), another Squad-aligned House member, fell to defeat in a bitterly contested New York primary.

“There’s a lot of last-minute fundraising for Don by folks who want to see the Squad out,” Manny Houle, a Democratic operative familiar with the race, told JI on Friday. “But this last-minute inundation of funds is not supporting the ground game necessary.”

Meanwhile, pro-Israel groups that spent heavily to help dislodge Bush and Bowman, including AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel, have refrained from engaging in the Minneapolis primary, even as Samuels has publicly insisted that they are missing out on a key opportunity in his rematch with Omar, 41, an outspoken Israel critic he sees as increasingly vulnerable.

Samuels, who has cast himself as a supporter of Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza, expressed similar frustrations last cycle after he came within 2,500 votes of beating Omar in an unexpectedly close race. Weeks later, federal filings revealed that AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, had in fact quietly contributed $350,000 to a separate group to boost his candidacy in the final stretch of the contest.

This cycle, however, AIPAC ruled out engaging in the primary altogether, according to two sources familiar with the group’s approach, though several AIPAC donors have still contributed to Samuels’ campaign.

Before Samuels announced his rematch last November, AIPAC had sought to recruit another challenger to Omar, LaTrisha Vetaw, a Minneapolis councilwoman who declined to enter the race. The pro-Israel group had privately acknowledged it had missed a chance to oust Omar in 2022, but felt that Samuels had “reached his capacity,” according to a Democratic operative familiar with with the matter who spoke with JI at the time.

Representatives for AIPAC and its affiliated super PAC declined to comment on the race last week.

Democratic Majority for Israel’s political arm, DMFI PAC, also determined that the race wasn’t winnable and chose not to act, according to a source with knowledge of internal discussions, even as the group had likewise felt it misjudged the previous contest. “Last time, Samuels came very close, but we didn’t find that out until very late,” the source told JI. “A lot of us were kicking ourselves about that.”

The Jewish Democratic Council of America, for its part, ultimately chose not to endorse Samuels during its monthly board meeting last month, even as the group has expressed concerns with Omar’s positions on Israel, including support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

A small number of lesser-known pro-Israel groups have recently sought to boost Samuels’ campaign, despite the fact that AIPAC and DMFI PAC have kept their distance from the race.

Polling has indicated that Samuels is facing long odds as he takes a second swing at defeating Omar, who raised more than $1.6 million last quarter and began the end of July with just over $680,000 on hand — a war chest she has deployed to mount an aggressive ad campaign. 

By contrast, Samuels, whose campaign launched its first TV ads last month, has struggled to keep pace against his well-funded opponent, despite a recent uptick in donations. In the most recent quarter, he pulled in $540,000, entering the final few weeks of the race with just under half of that sum on hand.

Samuels and his supporters argue the race is still competitive, citing an even more daunting polling margin in the previous contest, when he overcame a nearly 40-point deficit to lose by just two points, among other factors.

In the interview with JI, Samuels noted that Omar’s spending has not meaningfully “moved the polling needle,” claiming that voters in the district remain unconvinced by her outreach because “she has been inaccessible” during her time in Congress, which he has criticized as divisive. “That is more indicative of voter sentiment and it goes to show the limitations of money’s role in this race,” he said.

His campaign has also accused Omar of misleading voters in recent ads “strongly implying” that she has won endorsements from President Joe Biden as well as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the newly tapped running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Though Biden and Walz have not backed Omar’s campaign, she has otherwise earned endorsements from Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), a long-standing AIPAC ally who last summer vowed to stand behind the progressive lawmaker amid speculation that she could face a challenger with support from pro-Israel groups.

Even as AIPAC has steered clear of the race, Omar and her allies have frequently dangled the threat of AIPAC’s spending to raise money for her campaign, including in recent email solicitations from Justice Democrats, the Squad-aligned progressive group.

“I narrowly won last time by only 2% of the vote, so we know it’s going to be close again,” Omar said in one fundraising pitch, using rhetoric at odds with more confident public statements, including a recent interview in which she envisioned defeating Samuels by a wider margin than the previous race. 

An Omar campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from JI on Friday.

While pro-Israel strategists have continued to monitor the race, the conditions that made Omar uniquely susceptible to a primary challenge last cycle haven’t resurfaced as a driving force in the rematch, the DMFI source explained.

During the last race, for instance, Minneapolis was embroiled in a fierce debate over policing, a liability for Omar, who faced backlash for supporting efforts to defund law enforcement. But two years later, the salience of that issue has diminished, even as Samuels has continued to criticize her approach.

In addition, Omar has been better prepared to defend her seat this election cycle, after Samuels’ strong primary showing caught her campaign by surprise. “I think she learned her lesson,” the DMFI source said last week. “I feel remorse that we’re not there, but the evidence just hasn’t been there and the circumstances are different.”

Locally, Samuels’ supporters, including numerous Jewish voters who are increasingly frustrated with Omar’s hostile positions toward Israel, say they are undeterred and believe that the race will be closer than outside observers suggest, particularly in what is expected to be a low-turnout election.

The Samuels campaign has been seeking to increase turnout among the estimated 30,000 Jewish voters who live in the district, which is heavily Democratic. There are about 130 Jewish volunteers now engaged in canvassing and other efforts, according to a local pro-Israel activist who is helping the campaign.

“It feels really like a movement rather than a campaign,” Samuels told JI.

If Samuels loses on Tuesday, it will mark the third consecutive primary in which Omar has defended her seat against a Democratic challenger, including a lesser-known rival, Antone Melton-Meaux, who in 2020 received assistance from pro-Israel donors and still lost by 20 points.

But in the wake of two major Squad losses this summer, some pro-Israel strategists speculate that even if Omar prevails on Tuesday, all but inevitably securing a fourth term in Congress, she could be vulnerable in future cycles should a more unifying challenger emerge.

“Don is a community leader, no doubt, but he’s not an organizer — and that, I think, is what we are seeing play out,” Houle, the Democratic operative, told JI. “But there’s also still a strong party center that is displeased with Ilhan — they just need to organize and get resourced enough with the right candidate. If Don can stay within four points, I’d take that as a win for the pro-Israel community.”