The fierce urgency of Omar Fateh

On a recent weekday afternoon, Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh walked out of his campaign office in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood to a near-celebrity welcome.

People on the sidewalk and in passing cars yelled his name. Several approached to ask for selfies. Someone even sang a spontaneous ode.

Many of the well-wishers from the neighborhood, the hub of Minneapolis’ east African community, punctuated their greetings with “Inshallah,” Arabic for “God willing.”

A city outreach worker wearing a bright orange shirt, Gamachis Mohamed, ran up to Fateh and hugged him, before referring to the two-term state senator as “the man, the myth, the legend.”

This is not the typical reception for mayoral candidates in Minneapolis. But Fateh, 35, isn’t your typical candidate.

Over the past five years, the democratic socialist has gone from political unknown to standard bearer for Minneapolis’ ascendant progressive coalition, harnessing disaffection with more moderate Democrats — and with the political process itself — to rack up a series of electoral and legislative wins.

He beat an entrenched incumbent to secure his Senate seat, spearheaded legislation to make college tuition free for lower income students, and forged a compromise to save Minneapolis 2040, the landmark zoning plan that allows more high-density housing throughout the city.

Now he is seeking to oust incumbent two-term Mayor Jacob Frey in an election that could determine the balance of power at City Hall, a contest between relative moderates and Fateh’s more progressive allies that has become widely seen as proxy battle over the future of the Democratic Party.

Or as Fateh joked to one woman who approached him in Cedar-Riverside to suggest he needs to eat more: “I’m at war; I cannot,” Fateh deadpanned.

Fateh’s approach to politics has been evident since the beginning of his career.

The son of immigrants from Somalia — Fateh also would be Minneapolis’ first Muslim mayor if elected — he was born in Washington, D.C., and raised with six siblings in a northern Virginia suburb, Annandale, just a few miles from the town where Frey was raised, Oakton. (Fateh’s wife delivered their first child this year, just 10 days after Frey welcomed his second.)

Growing up, other kids were drawn to Fateh, who was smart and “super funny,” says Virginia state Sen. Saddam Salim, who has been friends with Fateh since high school.

In 2015, when he was 25, Fateh was working as a campaign finance analyst for the Federal Election Commission when he made his first run for public office, seeking an at-large seat on the Fairfax County School Board in Virginia.

One of the major issues in the race was a controversial decision by the school board that spring to adopt a policy to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity, and to add lessons about sexual orientation and gender identity to its curriculum.

The Democratic school board candidates supported the policy change, which came the same year the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. Fateh and three Republican candidates opposed it, according to two Virginia news outlets, including one called MuslimLink.

Fateh now says those news accounts of his stance on the issue were wrong, and he maintains he supported the board’s decision.

But an incumbent who defeated Fateh remembers it differently. Ryan McElveen, one of two Democrats elected to the board that November, said Fateh spoke out against the district’s policy during the campaign “in veiled language.”

While seeking the Democratic endorsement for the board seat that fall, Fateh promised to drop out of the race if he didn’t get it. When the endorsement went to the three Democratic incumbents instead, he stayed in the race.

Fateh won just 2%, but his 11,000 votes were enough to split the Democratic vote and help the Republican in the race win by about 5,000 votes, according to the Blue Virginia blog.

Fateh’s campaign manager, Akhilesh Menawat, said there are many reasons candidates may continue running if they don’t get the endorsement, and while he doesn’t know the circumstances of the school board race, he said Fateh has voted in favor of LGBTQ bills in the Senate “every opportunity he’s had.”

Indeed, Fateh has consistently voted in favor of legislation favored by the LGBTQ community, including the state’s trans refuge law, passed in 2023.

Fateh visited relatives in the Twin Cities during summers as a child, and he decided to move to Minneapolis in 2015. According to a 2018 MinnPost report, his decision to move came after friends and family told him Minnesota was more fertile ground for an aspiring politician.

He went on to work as a project coordinator in the Minnesota Department of Transportation and in the property tax division at the Minnesota Department of Revenue. In 2020, he began working at the University of Minnesota, where he is currently a business analyst in the Office of Information Technology.

In 2018, he ran for the state House, finishing third in the primary won by former Rep. Hodan Hassan.

Two years later, he challenged veteran DFL state Sen. Jeff Hayden, then the Senate’s assistant minority leader.

Running as a self-identified democratic socialist, Fateh won the DFL Senate district endorsement during a virtual convention that May.

Hayden questioned the validity of the results, saying his campaign was unable to verify the addresses of nearly half the delegates. A credentials committee declined to remove the delegates, and Fateh went on to win the primary in the heavily Democratic district that August.

The federal investigation focused on misuse of the absentee ballot “agent delivery” process, in which elderly or ill voters can have a friend, family member or someone else they designate deliver their ballot to an election office.

In the end, one person was charged with wrongdoing: Muse Mohamud Mohamed, who had volunteered for Fateh’s 2020 campaign.

Mohamed was eventually convicted of lying to a federal grand jury after he testified that he was asked to deliver absentee ballots for several voters in the 2020 primary.

After Mohamed was convicted of perjury and Fateh’s Senate DFL colleagues called on him to address the case, Fateh disclosed that Mohamed was his brother-in-law. Fateh had previously told DFL leadership he had no relationship with the man.

A Senate ethics complaint filed against Fateh was dismissed after no evidence was found that he knew about the absentee ballots.

The Senate ethics committee examined whether Fateh inappropriately sought a half-million dollars in state grants for Somali TV of Minnesota four months after the YouTube channel ran campaign ads supporting him. The committee found Fateh failed to report paying Somali TV $1,000 for campaign ads, but found that there was no evidence of a quid pro quo.

Another aspect of that 2020 Senate campaign would resurface in his campaign for mayor.

His 2020 campaign literature noted his support for a ballot measure that would have dismantled the Minneapolis Police Department and created a new public safety department, a plan organized by progressives who had promoted the defund movement. His 2020 campaign website also included a photo of Minneapolis City Council members on stage in front of a “defund police” sign.

But Fateh has repeatedly claimed he did not support defunding the police in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, recently saying at a candidate forum that it was “a flat-out lie.”

On a recent campaign swing on the University of Minnesota campus, Fateh told students that as mayor, he’d push for a $20 minimum wage, quicker police responses and more affordable housing.

When one student called him “sir,” Fateh corrected him. “Omar. Not sir.”

Fateh says he learned the importance of responding to voters while working for Connolly, the Virginia congressman.

“That’s one of the things I carried with me is — no matter how busy things get — staying on top of constituent services," he said.

Informing that work, Fateh said, is the knowledge that he represents a district with “the most unmet needs” and people who have “traditionally been shut out of the process and not had anyone stick their neck out for them.”

Sticking up for those constituents has sometimes involved eschewing internal party niceties and even the DFL’s larger priorities.

“Is there a formal process to switch party/caucus affiliation to independent? If so, please provide me with those details,” he said in an email reviewed by the Minnesota Star Tribune, the existence of which was first reported by the Minnesota Reformer.

Fateh didn’t say in the email why he was considering the move, and he won’t say today. But at the time he was angry over the DFL’s public statements about Israel’s military response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Just days before sending the email, Fateh had emailed his Democratic colleagues complaining about a social media post by a DFL lobbyist and donor who quoted the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir saying, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

Fateh condemned his fellow lawmakers for failing to publicly denounce the “incredibly vile” post.

“What this really shows is conviction, not a negotiation tactic,” said Menawat, Fateh’s campaign manager.

Sen. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka, who sits next to Fateh on the Senate floor, said they get along well even though they disagree on many issues. “He was surprised how well I treated him,” Abeler said. “He came in with an opinion about Republicans.”

Abeler gives Fateh credit for being a fierce advocate for his district and his community, and for recognizing when he had an advantage that he could press.

Indeed, what others call hardball, Fateh calls doing his job.

“These big corporations and these entities that show up to the Capitol, they don’t have a shortage of voices for them; they’re going to be just fine,” Fateh said. “I like to stand up for the working person and the person that historically has been left behind.”

At the end of the 2024 legislative session, Fateh went missing from the Senate for more than 10 hours. At the time, Democrats controlled the chamber by a single vote, and Fateh’s absence brought business to a halt until a deal was reached on his top priority, the setting of minimum pay rates for Uber and Lyft drivers.

“People were angry with him,” Abeler said, “but he played a smart card.”