Roper: Jacob Frey can thank the far left for handing him another term

Here we are again.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey won a third term this week after leftists assumed the city electorate shares their loathing of Frey enough to launch a democratic socialist into the stratosphere.

Frey was vulnerable. He’s a polarizing two-term incumbent at the helm of a dysfunctional City Hall. But Omar Fateh, his top challenger, proved to be a gift.

Rather than settling for incrementalism, the far left rallied early on around a pretty radical candidate with enough baggage to fill a cargo plane. That approach will lose every time in a city that has proven, again and again, that it is more moderate on the whole than some of its City Council members would have you believe.

DeWayne Davis and Jazz Hampton were valuable additions to the race, offering nuanced alternatives to current administration. But what chance did they have?

What was their path after Fateh snagged the Minneapolis DFL endorsement, an event that put the city — the whole state, really — on alert that local activists had chosen Fateh for the mission against Frey?

I wrote at the time that this binary narrative would favor Frey. And it did.

But the damage was done. The public had heard about Frey’s opponent and his plans for “flipping priorities” at City Hall, including rent control and hiking the city minimum wage to $20.

Davis and Hampton spent the rest of the campaign struggling for name recognition. Rather than highlight their differences with Fateh, they made the bargain of joining with him on the “Slate for Change.”

A slate typically a) can’t be won by only one person, and b) has uniting policy principles.

But the only uniting idea of the “Slate for Change” seemed to be that Jacob Frey needs to go. Just put these three guys on your ballot, in any order, despite the vast policy differences. Rent control, whatever. (Hampton insists he never said “Don’t Rank Frey,” so who even knows what the slate was about.)

It was essentially version 2.0 of 2021’s failed “Don’t Rank Frey” strategy. And it primarily served Fateh, though not enough voters played along to put him over the top.

Davis and Hampton proved in the end to be more boutique candidates, without enough name ID to move ahead. Fateh had basically sucked all the air out of the room, bolstered by endorsements from labor groups and the progressive wing of the City Council.

The “Minneapolis Mamdani” was predictably pummeled by attack ads fueled by mountains of cash from rich people scared by the prospect of a democratic socialist City Hall. I suspect all that dough would have had a harder time villainizing Davis and Hampton in the same way.

The media certainly amplified a binary narrative about the race after the convention, as some people complained. But they were just reflecting a goose that was already cooked. When someone wins the DFL endorsement, that’s the top contender.

I tried, in this column, to highlight Davis and Hampton as serious challengers. This newspaper wrote profiles of all four candidates, who also squared off in a multitude of debates and forums.

Then on Election Day, I talked to voters in every ward of the city. And many Jacob Frey supporters said they were backing the mayor because public safety is their top priority and crime has put them on edge. Yet Frey controls the police department, which has been receiving more money every year.

But when the far left is pouring their energy into a candidate who supported dismantling the police department in 2021, and the other challengers are palling around with him on campaign literature, I can understand why people got skittish about changing horses.

You’ve got to hope there’s some sort of reset over there at City Hall.

Frey needs to wake up to the fact that his chief City Council antagonists cruised to re-election. Aisha Chughtai, for example, is not some aberration that can be taken out by an arsenal of money.

The council split is also a bit fuzzier now. Asked recently about how he would navigate the council’s progressive-moderate divide, Council Member-elect Jamison Whiting suggested that the question deserves a two-hour discussion. I appreciate the nuance.

If Frey were better at the politics of his job, he would gently cajole leaders like Whiting who show they have an open mind. Toss them credit. Lift them up. And not demand total loyalty to be part of “Team Minneapolis” — an unfortunate name being used to describe Frey’s allies, which implies that dissenters don’t have the city’s interests at heart.

The democratic socialists will continue to run headfirst into a more moderate mayor until they come to grips with the reality of the citywide electorate. I’m reminded of how Fateh told the DFL convention that his campaign “isn’t about baby steps.”