Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said in a podcast out Thursday that it would take something “tragic” for fellow Democrats to nominate Joseph R. Biden or Pete Buttigieg for president.
The first-term congresswoman made the comment while being asked about the candidates during a rapid-fire round of questions near the end of an interview conducted by The Intercept.
“If one of them is the candidate for your party, who would you rather it be?” she was asked by the interviewer.
“So you’re saying if something tragic happened and they ended up being the nominee?” Ms. Omar replied.
Pressed further to answer with whatever comes to mind upon hearing both candidates’ names, Ms. Omar replied: “I don’t know. It’s hard. ’None’ comes to my head.”
Ms. Omar has endorsed Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont Independent, as her preferred Democratic presidential candidate.
Several recent nationwide polls have placed Mr. Sanders among the top three front-runners seeking the Democratic nod in 2020, typically alongside Mr. Biden, who previously served eight years as vice president under former President Barack Obama, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat.
Mr. Buttigieg, a Democrat currently serving his second term as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has recently surged in the polls among fellow candidates seeking the party’s nomination to run in 2020 against President Trump, however.
The results released Thursday of a statewide poll conducted in Iowa, one of the first states to hold nominating contests, ranked Mr. Buttigieg in second place, ahead of both Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders but trailing Ms. Warren.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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