Frey and Fateh clash, plus 9 other takeaways from the Minneapolis mayoral debate

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and challenger state Sen. Omar Fateh repeatedly clashed Friday morning in the city’s first mayoral debate of the 2025 election.

Five candidates sat side by side on stage for the debate, hosted by the Citizens League at Westminster Presbyterian Church. But as the candidates spelled out their visions for downtown Minneapolis, public safety, and housing, the most intense exchanges came between the two elected officials on the panel: Fateh and Frey.

Fateh repeatedly accused Frey of bullying his way through city business and creating an office that doesn’t work well with county and state partners. Frey, pointing to Fateh’s 2020 campaign for the state Senate, highlighted Fateh’s past support for defunding the Minneapolis police, a position Fateh has since moderated.

Fateh also said Frey’s campaign has spread lies connecting him with fraud, while Frey said Fateh didn’t offer original solutions for revitalizing downtown.

The focus on Frey and Fateh, the two most prominent candidates, prompted another candidate, the Rev. DeWayne Davis, to remind the audience that voters will be asked to rank their three top choices in the ranked-choice voting. “It’s not binary,” he said.

Still, he, along with the candidates Jazz Hampton and Brenda Short, were sometimes sidelined by the Fateh-vs.-Frey fight, which pits the democratic socialist against the more moderate two-term incumbent.

Some other takeaways from the 90-minute debate:

He blamed Frey for more divided city government, the post-pandemic downturn in downtown real estate and failing to deliver on his promise to end homelessness.

Fateh saved his strongest attack on Frey for his closing, when he repeatedly said Frey “lied” about banning no-knock warrants, backing Uber and Lyft drivers, supporting labor, and standing up to President Donald Trump by not keeping police away from federal raids.

“Now more than ever, Minneapolis needs a leader and not a liar,” Fateh said.

One of Fateh’s most pointed critiques came when he described the downtown Frey inherited when he took office in 2017 as a “dream compared to what we have now.”

“This is all happening under his watch,” he said.

Frey acknowledged that was a “joke that perhaps was not funny” but said he brings results over rhetoric.

When Frey said Fateh has supported defunding the police, Fateh denied it, saying “that is a flat-out lie.”

But Fateh’s 2020 Senate campaign literature advocated dismantling the Minneapolis Police Department and creating a new public safety department, a plan that was rejected by Minneapolis voters in 2021. Fateh’s 2020 campaign materials included a sign with City Council members in front of a “defund police” sign.

Asked about policing, Fateh said the city should expand its unarmed behavioral crisis responders to answer more 911 calls. “Every response does not require an armed officer,” he said.

Davis said he rejects the false choice between “warrior-style police at every corner” and defunding police, saying there are lots of options in between.

Hampton said he was “open” to keeping O’Hara, despite some “troubling” things recently; Davis said yes — if O’Hara follows his vision; and Fateh said it would be irresponsible to decide before the election.

Only Frey gave the chief a full-throated endorsement, saying O’Hara has his support and he’s proud to have recruited him from Newark, N.J.

Fateh was the only candidate who said he supports rent control.

Pitching it as a necessary step to protect renters, he said voters have overwhelmingly voted for rent control and the city can learn from what happened in St. Paul, where a robust rent control ordinance that went into effect in 2022 got blowback from developers, prompting the city to soften it.

“We have a lot of opportunities to learn from St. Paul, including what exemptions we can put in place” to incentivize landlords and developers keeping rents low, Fateh said.

Short said she’d go to the scene to calm people.

Frey said it’s MPD’s job to respond to things like property damage.

And Hampton said it’s police’s job to respond; “We just want to make sure their boots are pointed in the correct direction.”

Fateh, who was at the Lake Street scene, said he would not support MPD helping with crowd control at such incidents.

“If they come in and make a mess, they have to clean up that mess,” he said.

The candidates disagreed on how to manage the city’s homeless population, and how to deal with encampments that pop up around the city, are cleared by police and then reappear elsewhere.

Fateh said nobody wants encampments, but he accused Frey’s administration of acting inhumanely toward inhabitants. He said homelessness should be treated as a public health emergency. “Bulldozing our neighbors block by block does not put them into housing,” he said.

Frey and Hampton said there should be no encampments in the city.

Davis said the city needs to beef up its response so that when homeless people begin to congregate, the city should respond immediately before it becomes a “roving criminal band.”

Short said she was the only one on the stage who has been homeless, and she suggested converting a vacant nursing home to house hundreds of people.

Fateh’s wife co-founded a company designed to offer services under the housing program, but he said she never operated it. He also sponsored a bill that would have allowed certain county case managers to sign people up for the housing program — and his wife works as an assistant case manager for Hennepin County.

Fateh said a KARE 11 story suggesting he had a conflict of interest was a “false story” and that his bill wouldn’t have benefitted his wife. He said the bill was meant to take power from the state and give it to county workers and would have prevented fraud.

During a March hearing on his bill, however, Fateh never mentioned that; he said the bill would help address a state backlog of applications.

Fateh was also asked about connections to “elections malfeasance” — in 2022, Fateh’s brother-in-law, Muse Mohamud Mohamed, was convicted of lying to a federal grand jury about delivering absentee ballots for voters.

Fateh called that a right-wing attack and noted he was cleared by a Senate ethics committee of wrongdoing.

Frey challenged Fateh to show where he’s spread misinformation, noting that he has supported Fateh when he was the target of Islamophobic attacks, and when Fateh’s headquarters was vandalized with threatening graffiti. Fateh claimed it took police four to five hours to respond.

Frey was asked about an aide who pleaded guilty to fraud in the Feeding Our Future case. He said the aide was fired “the minute we found out.”

The debate was short on humor, but entrepreneur Jazz Hampton scored points with the audience during a discussion on whether or not the candidates would support tax subsidies for a new Timberwolves basketball stadium.

Asked what he would do to make sure the Timberwolves stay, he restated the question: “What do I do to make sure the Minnesota Lynx stay in Minneapolis?” he deadpanned.