Roper: DFL endorsement of democratic socialist wakes up sleepy Minneapolis mayor’s race

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Now the juices are flowing.

The DFL’s endorsement of democratic socialist candidate Omar Fateh on Saturday night abruptly rousted what had been a fairly sleepy race for mayor of Minneapolis.

Fateh’s supporters are energized, including several City Council members who donned his T-shirts and worked the convention. But his endorsement will also be an alarm bell for voters on the sidelines who are quietly worried about the leftward lurch of city politics.

We might as well have it out — that ideological brawl that has been brewing for some time at City Hall. The citywide electorate will decide in November which faction of our increasingly polarized local politics represents the true zeitgeist of Minneapolis.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think that scenario benefits Mayor Jacob Frey. The last time Minneapolis took a big vote on upending the status quo, in 2021, residents rejected an overhaul of the Police Department and handed the mayor more power.

Frey does seem vulnerable, however. His re-election may depend on whether his three main challengers — Fateh, the Rev. DeWayne Davis and Jazz Hampton — collectively form a strong anyone-but-Frey strategy for ranked-choice voting (ensuring their supporters rank the other challengers as second and third choice).

But the race also hasn’t really begun, in many ways. Back when I covered the 2013 mayoral election (35 candidates for an open seat), the Star Tribune polled city voters in early September. The results were pretty off the mark from what happened on Election Day.

It was fitting that this messy endorsement business went down in the city-owned Target Center, which I spent Saturday calling “The Albatross” — since that’s what it will represent on the city’s books after our basketball teams find a more lucrative place to play hoops.

I waltzed in at 9 a.m. when registration started, amped up for a day of politicking. Rookie mistake. The first vote for the mayor’s race did not occur until around EIGHT HOURS LATER. Security measures added to the delay, but only some of it.

These events are seemingly designed to be so agonizing that only the most fervent people can stand it. So it’s not surprising that Fateh’s supporters turned out, since he’s proposing changes that really stoke the adrenaline of the far left.

“This campaign isn’t about baby steps,” Fateh, who has served in the state Senate since 2021, told the convention. “It’s about flipping priorities and building people power.”

Fateh supports rent control, for example, and says the city shouldn’t be a “playground for developers.” Frey touts how housing development has kept rents down.

The most stinging attack on Frey occurred during the question-and-answer session with the candidates, when he was asked to address why the officer who shot Amir Locke in a no-knock raid in 2022 is now leading the Police Department’s use-of-force training. The crowd erupted as the question was read.

Frey said he trusts the decisions of his chief, Brian O’Hara, whom he selected for his record of police reform. Davis retorted that “boneheaded decisions like this [are] unacceptable” when trying to convince the public that police are committed to reform.

Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt’s introduction of Frey at the convention illustrates how he is leaning into a public safety theme. “Mayor Frey is the best person to lead the city and especially the Minneapolis Police Department,” Witt said.

It’s worth highlighting that the whole day hinged on a voting system that raised a lot of eyebrows. The Frey campaign is appealing the result to the state DFL.

Midway through the first ballot, someone noted that there was no option for “no endorsement.” So organizers added the option and told people they could update their votes — it would all be handled on the back end.

The mayoral results were read two hours later, after the convention dealt with some Park Board endorsement business. Fateh won about 44%, Frey about 32% and Davis 19.93% — 0.07% short of the 20% threshold to proceed. (That’s a high first-ballot threshold compared with other conventions, which immediately made it a two-person contest.)

Frey supporters wondered why the number of votes counted was so much lower than the number of potential delegates and alternates who could have voted. (This sounds in the weeds, but it was a big question as I made the rounds.)

Before the second ballot, the Frey campaign said the first ballot should be redone using paper. This failed. The convention rejected proposals to wrap up with no endorsement.

So Frey’s campaign yanked its supporters. This is a trick sometimes used to deny the convention quorum, as happened in 2013 when Betsy Hodges’ campaign held an impromptu pizza party outside the Convention Center to block endorsement.