Who is Omar Fateh, the man Minneapolis Democrats endorsed for mayor?

Sen. Omar Fateh has won the endorsement for mayor of Minneapolis Democrats, but he’s such a relative unknown that even his supporters sometimes mispronounced his name during the convention on Saturday. (It’s pronounced Fah-tay, although Fateh says he’s fine with other pronunciations.)

Here are some things to know:

The 35-year-old son of Somali immigrants was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in a Virginia suburb. As a college student, he interned with U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, and ran for the Fairfax County School Board in 2015. He won 2% of the vote.

His friends and relatives in Minneapolis told him Minnesota was fertile ground for politicians, so he moved here in 2015, he told MinnPost three years later. Fateh’s campaign manager, Akhi Menawat, disputed that was the reason Fateh moved to Minnesota, saying he moved here to take a job in the city elections office.

He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, who’s pregnant with their first child.

Fateh has had a lot of firsts: He was the first Somali American elected to serve in the state Senate and is believed to be the first Somali American state senator in the U.S.

He’s one of few democratic socialists in the Minnesota Legislature.

They’re both young, Muslim democratic socialists — an ascendant wing of the left who criticize capitalism and prioritize workers over corporations.

Fateh has been talking like Mamdani since at least 2020, when he supported a $15 statewide minimum wage, free public transportation and single-payer health care.

Fateh’s first political foray in Minnesota was a 2018 House race, which he lost. Two years later he challenged veteran DFL state Sen. Jeff Hayden, who had served in the Legislature since 2009.

Fateh beat Hayden in the primary — the election that really counts in the heavily Democratic district — but questions about the election would dog Fateh for years.

Fateh shepherded legislation to make public college free for students whose families make less than $80,000 annually.

After the bill passed, drivers hoisted him onto their shoulders and carried him around the Capitol. But Gov. Tim Walz vetoed the bill and created a task force to come up with legislation for the 2024 session. Fateh was appointed to the task force but withdrew.

In 2024, Fateh again leveraged the DFL’s one-seat margin in the final days, going missing at one point and effectively shutting down the entire chamber. Lawmakers passed a bill setting pay minimums and giving drivers new insurance protections.

During his 2020 campaign, Fateh indicated he supported defunding and dismantling the Minneapolis Police Department.

He has since moderated his position, emphasizing investment in alternatives to policing and promising “bold and transformative approaches to public safety will end the cycle of the Minneapolis Police Department’s violence and brutality that has held our city captive for so many years.”

Fateh has said he would discipline Police Chief Brian O’Hara for being on the scene of a June federal raid on a Lake Street restaurant. Fateh went to the scene as protesters gathered, and has called the operation “blatant fascism.” He accused MPD of cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and said it would be “unconscionable” for police to even help with crowd control.

He advocates for rent control, preventing evictions without “just cause,” a $20 minimum wage by 2028 and a ban on police interacting with ICE.

Federal investigators looked into voter fraud allegations in Fateh’s 2020 primary election, and in 2022 charged Fateh’s brother-in-law and campaign volunteer Muse Mohamud Mohamed with lying to a federal grand jury about Mohamed’s handling of absentee ballots during the campaign.

Mohamed’s perjury conviction led to a state Senate ethics investigation. The committee dismissed the complaint after finding no evidence that Fateh knew about the absentee ballots. Fateh’s campaign manager declined to answer most questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

The Ethics Committee recommended Fateh take a refresher course on campaign finance rules, even though he previously worked as a campaign finance analyst for the Federal Election Commission and later for the Minneapolis Elections Office.

Fateh defended the nonprofit at the center of what became a massive pandemic relief fraud, Feeding Our Future, until federal raids began.

He recently told the Minnesota Reformer he now knows some providers were lying to him and is furious about the fraud.

He returned $11,000 in donations from people involved in the case.