Mohamud Noor

Mohamud Noor (Somali: Maxamuud Nuur, Arabic: محمود نور‎) is a Somali-American computer scientist, activist and politician. He is the interim Director of the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota.

Personal life

Noor was born between 1977 and 1978 in Somalia. Following the start of the civil war, he and his family sought asylum in Kenya. They shortly afterwards emigrated to the United States in 1999, settling in Minnesota.^[1]

For his post-secondary studies, Noor earned a B.S. in computer science from the Metropolitan State University.^[2] He held a part-time job at Macy's while studying.^[3]

Noor is a Muslim.^[1] He is married to Farhiya Del, with whom he has four children.^[2][3] The family has lived in the Audubon Park neighborhood since 2009.^[2] He has plans to buy a new home in Seward.^[4]

Career

Noor is a computer scientist by training. He was a system administrator for the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Due to a law prohibiting federal employees from campaigning, he later stepped down from the position.^[2]

In 2010, Noor ran for a seat on the board of the Minneapolis Public Schools, finishing in fifth place. He was the runner-up in the next year's DFL Senate District 59 primary ballot, when he earned 26 percent of votes.^[5][6] Noor's campaign had received endorsements from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, Stonewall DFL and Take Action Minnesota.^[5] In December 2013, he was appointed to the Minneapolis school board, beating out Ubah Jama on a 5-3 vote to replace the late Hussein Samatar.^[4]

Additionally, Noor is the acting Director of the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota, a Minneapolis-based NGO serving immigrants. He accepted the position after taking an unremunerated leave of absence from his information technology operations job for Hennepin County.^[7]

In February 2014, Noor challenged veteran state legislator Phyllis Kahn for a DFL-Minneapolis seat.^[8] He ran in the smaller House district, an area with around 25 percent foreign-born residents.^[1] Noor's policy priorities were job creation via investments in the green economy, health care issues, and forging partnerships with the University of Minnesota. Additionally, he sought to secure more funding for schools, advocated a move away from complete reliance on property taxes in this regard, and backed the state government's request for a waiver to get out of No Child Left Behind.^[2][7] He likewise supported sick days for low-wage workers, internment at Fort Snelling National Cemetery for Hmong veterans of the Vietnam War, as well as the Affordable Care Act.^[7] In contrast to the majority of his socially conservative constituents, Noor's campaign also supported same-sex marriage.^[9] He received endorsements from the former Mayor of Minneapolis R. T. Rybak as well as several local progressive groups,^[1] including the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, Stonewall DFL, and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers.^[2]

The first campaign caucus was held at a community center early in the month, and ended when activists disagreed over who should run the meeting. The February 19 caucus at the University of Minnesota's Coffman Union was in turn attended by 421 delegates and dozens of observers. Noor wound up securing 28 delegates for the Senate District 60B convention scheduled for April 5 to Kahn's 15 delegates.^[8] Brian Rice, an attorney for the Phyllis Kahn Volunteer Committee, alleged that there was voter fraud during the campaigning process.^[10] He later removed allegations from his legal petition that were directly naming the Noor campaign.^[11] According to voter registration records from the Secretary of State's office and the DFL Voter Activation Network, the irregularities were instead a mixup due to voters using the communal Cedar Mailbox Center as their home address when they registered to vote.^[10] County officials found no wrongdoing on the part of the Noor campaign, but suggested that voter registration could not be conducted at the mailbox location since it was not a valid address. The Kahn campaign also alleged that an election judge had independently attempted to sway voters towards supporting Noor's office bid. A Supreme Court order later ruled in favor of the Kahn team's petition, stipulating that the election judge should no longer interact with voters.^[11]

On 12 August 2014, the DFL Senate District 60B ballot was held. Noor lost to Kahn, receiving 1,949 votes (45.53 percent) to her 2,332 votes (54.47 percent).^[12] The primary challenge was reportedly one of Kahn's most difficult since her first election in 1972.^[13]

References

External links

• Official website