Debate over traffic tickets, vehicle choices enters race for Minneapolis mayor

In a veiled swipe at challenger Omar Fateh, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Friday told the world that he drives a Honda Element after a Minnesota Star Tribune columnist wrote about Fateh receiving traffic tickets in his 2023 BMW X3.

Columnist Rochelle Olson jeered the state senator for being ticketed twice in the past year for violating Minnesota’s hands-free cellphone law. But social media circles quickly seized on the fact that Fateh, a Minneapolis lawmaker and democratic socialist, drives a pretty snazzy SUV.

Among a half-dozen candidates, Fateh is considered Frey’s top challenger for re-election this fall. The Minneapolis DFL endorsed him last month.

A Minnesota Star Tribune contributing columnist, Andy Brehm, wrote on X that “the bigger question is how can the self-described ‘man of the people’” afford a car that costs “as much or more than his senator’s salary of $51,750.” (That seems high for a 2023 X3, according to a Kelley Blue Book estimate.)

And then the mayor himself got into the game, reposting on social media an old video of his 2003 Element: “Lately, there’s been some interest in the cars candidates drive. Here’s mine.”

Frey said he bought the car to drive across the country to run in marathons because he could lay the seats flat and sleep in it rather than pay for hotel rooms.

“You shouldn’t drive it too fast around corners because it may topple,” Frey says nonchalantly in the video.

Olson reported that when Fateh was stopped last year near Mankato, he told the officer he was holding his phone to punch in his GPS coordinates. The second time he was stopped, in January, Fateh again told a Golden Valley police officer he was looking at his GPS.

The officer didn’t buy it, writing on the citation that Fateh had the GPS up on the vehicle’s navigation screen, had previously been cited for the same offense and “knew he wasn’t supposed to have a cellphone in hand,” according to court records.

Said Frey campaign spokesperson Darwin Forsyth: “Driving while texting is unsafe and wrong — both the first time and the second — and so is misleading a police officer about your actions.”