'My voice is needed': How Nadia Mohamed made election history in St. Louis Park

MPR NEWS | St. Louis Park | November 7, 2019 8:39 AM | By Becky Z. Dernbach

When Thom Miller decided to step aside from the St. Louis Park City Council, he asked Nadia Mohamed to help him find someone to run for his seat who’d reflect the city’s increasing diversity.

After two weeks of searching, Mohamed decided she wanted it.

“I realized how much my voice is needed,” Mohamed, 23, said Wednesday morning after making history, winning Miller’s at-large seat to become the City Council’s first Muslim and first Somali member.

Mohamed won easily with 63 percent of the first-choice votes in the race to replace Miller. It sent a message that St. Louis Park is a place to “be inclusive in the day-to-day decision-making levels in the city,” she said.

Mohamed came to St. Louis Park as a Somali refugee at age 10 and enrolled in St. Louis Park public schools. After graduating from high school in 2015, she said she struggled as an adult to feel at home in a city where social circles are often segregated.

“That’s when I started realizing how much I felt like a visitor in my community,” Mohamed said in an interview with Sahan Journal. She wanted to help build connections between different cultural groups.

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