A small but growing list of congressional Democrats who say they won’t attend the presidential inauguration ceremony next month now includes Ilhan Omar.
The progressive DFLer from Minneapolis, who was elected to a fourth term in November, told Axios last week she will observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day-related events in Minnesota’s most Democratic congressional district instead of watching Donald Trump’s oath of office.
“Oh no, I will not be there … I’ll be home,” she told the outlet. She said attending MLK Day events in Minnesota “makes sense, because why risk any chaos that might be up here?” It will be just the third time a presidential inauguration coincides with MLK Day.
Axios reached out to Omar as part of a survey it sent to every Democrat in Congress asking if they will attend Trump’s oath of office and related inauguration events.
McCollum undecided, Morrison and Craig will attend
In addition to Omar, Axios is reporting that 12 other Democratic members of Congress have indicated they won’t attend the event, and 20, including Rep. Betty McCollum of St. Pau, are undecided. Two other Minnesota Democrats in the U.S. House—Angie Craig and Kelly Morrison—told the Star Tribune they will attend.
When Trump was first elected in 2016, McCollum played her cards close to her vest as to whether she would attend Trump’s inauguration, right up until just days before Trump was sworn in as the nation’s 45th president.
McCollum told her constituents at the time that she would attend Trump’s inauguration ceremony even as she called the president-elect’s agenda “dangerous” and his behavior and policy proposals “repugnant.” After the ceremony, McCollum described Trump’s speech as a “dark and frightening vision of an America divided at home and isolated in the world.”
Klobuchar chairs inauguration committee
One prominent Minnesota Democrat who will be there is Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Fresh off winning a fourth term in the U.S. Senate, Klobuchar said in a statement to media this week that she would indeed attend the inauguration, as she is honoring the commitment she made earlier this year when she was named chair of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.
“I have been working for nearly a year with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the Senate and the House on the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies,” Klobuchar said in a statement she first released on Monday to the Star Tribune. “I took on this position knowing no matter which candidate wins, we must have a peaceful transition of power.”
That’s somewhat of a departure in tone from a story she told while she was running in the Democratic presidential primary in 2019 at a campaign rally in Iowa.
During that rally, she recalled her attendance at the 2017 inauguration ceremony, when Trump gave his first oath of office. She told supporters she sat next to then-Sen. John McCain, who she said “kept reciting” names of dictators during the ceremony.
“John McCain kept reciting to me names of dictators during that speech,” Klobuchar told supporters, “because he knew more than any of us what we were facing as a nation, he understood it.”
Minnesota’s other U.S. Senator, Democrat Tina Smith, told the Star Tribune this week that she is still “finalizing her schedule and does not know if she will attend.”
Hank Long
Hank Long is a journalism and communications professional whose writing career includes coverage of the Minnesota legislature, city and county governments and the commercial real estate industry. Hank received his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, where he studied journalism, and his law degree at the University of St. Thomas. The Minnesota native lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and four children. His dream is to be around when the Vikings win the Super Bowl.
