Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is under the microscope for pocketing nearly $10,000 in campaign cash from donors tied to Somali-run daycare and health care outfits with some seriously questionable track records.
The Washington Examiner reported new reports show Walz has accepted substantial contributions from individuals connected to businesses flagged for fraud, safety lapses, and billing irregularities, raising red flags about oversight in Minnesota’s child care and health programs.
Let’s rewind to 2017 and 2018, when Siyad Abdullahi, a Kenyan-born businessman of Somali descent, handed over $4,000 to Walz’s campaign.
Abdullahi, who touts himself as a cultural competency expert, co-founded several Minneapolis-area ventures, including Pro-Health Home Care Agency, which claims to offer “culturally appropriate” care.
But here’s the kicker—Abdullahi boasted to the press that Pro-Health has “over 700 professionally trained caretakers, including licensed nurses, on hand,” yet an intake coordinator admitted no skilled nurses are currently available.
Sounds like a bit of puffery, doesn’t it? If you’re promising hundreds of trained professionals, shouldn’t they actually be on the roster?
Fast forward to 2018, when Walz’s gubernatorial run netted $2,250 from Abdiwadi Husen of Minnesota Quality Care and $500 from Nazneen Khatoon of Best Care Home Health Care.
Best Care, however, isn’t exactly a shining star—investigations in 2023 uncovered “neglect of a vulnerable adult” after a staff member smoked marijuana during a patient’s appointment and drove them home while impaired, according to a DHS inspector general’s memorandum.
That’s not just negligence; it’s a glaring failure of basic responsibility. How does a facility with such lapses keep getting state funds?
Best Care’s rap sheet doesn’t stop there—a 2023 court ruling found they improperly collected $2.23 million in Minnesota Health Care Program funds due to documentation errors, slapping them with a penalty for overpayments.
Going back even further, the outfit faced civil suits in 2002 and 2014 for fraudulent Medicare billing, with the U.S. government alleging Khatoon herself orchestrated schemes to bill for uncertified providers and split the payouts.
If this is “best care,” one shudders to think what “worst care” looks like. Surely, taxpayers deserve better stewardship of their hard-earned dollars.
In 2021, Khadar Jama of Open Hearts Home Health Care donated $1,000 to Walz, despite the company lacking a standalone website and sharing an address with Caring Home Health, which was cited for safety violations in 2024.
Then there’s Mohamed Rabi of Hiawatha Adult Day Center, who also gave $1,000 in 2022—yet his center, operating out of a strip mall in a high-crime area of Minneapolis, was previously dinged for failing to maintain critical patient records.
These connections beg the question: Why isn’t there tighter scrutiny over who’s funding political campaigns and where state subsidies are flowing? Minnesota families deserve transparency, not a system that seems to reward questionable operations with a wink and a nod.
