BY ED FELIEN
Early this year people were reminded that the City of Minneapolis was going to have municipal elections this November, and anybody who had an issue with City Hall should go to a DFL precinct caucus in early April.
A precinct caucus is like a neighborhood meeting. You talk about how you want your neighborhood and your city to be better than it is. Your neighborhood is your precinct. Your precinct is one of about a dozen in your Ward. At your precinct caucus you elect delegates to your Ward convention in May or June, and then the Ward convention elects delegates to the City Convention. The City DFL Convention endorses a candidate for Mayor in November’s election.
Thousands of people went to meetings to share their hopes and fears for the City of Minneapolis. Not everyone agreed on everything. There was legitimate debate on policies and past procedures.
That’s actually the point of democracy.
You discuss the candidates and then you vote for the candidate that best reflects your values and point of view.
Finally, on July 19, more than a thousand DFL delegates and alternates met at the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis to endorse a candidate for Mayor.
There were five candidates seeking DFL endorsement:
Omar Fateh is carried in celebration after his legislation to protect Uber and Lyft drivers passed in the Minnesota legislature.
Brenda Short and Jazz Hampton were two people who didn’t have much political history. Omar Fateh is a Minnesota state senator. Dr. DeWayne Davis, a former minister, was never elected to anything, but he was very active in the time leading up to the Convention. His slogan, “We deserve better!” became a rallying cry for opposition to the incumbent Mayor, Jacob Frey.
Jacob Frey was charming and gorgeous as ever—with a little spit curl of his coal black hair coming down his forehead. He was dressed in a blue shirt, without a suit coat or tie—maybe to give the impression that he was just coming from hard work at the office and didn’t have time to dress up?
I remember, more than five years ago, I wrote “A complaint, a dreamboat and a nightmare” in the May 11, 2020 issue of Southside Pride:
“On April 29, the Minneapolis City Council agreed to begin paying out more than a million dollars to stop the civil trial of Officer Lucas Peterson, charged with the wrongful death of Terrance Franklin. I couldn’t resist writing to the Council:
“’Your refusal to hold Lucas Peterson accountable for his actions in the murder of Terrance Franklin continues to legitimize the racist murders of young black men by our Minneapolis Police Department. Lucas Peterson’s obvious lies were impossible to believe, and the city will pay out $975,000 to Franklin’s father and another $250,000 to the law firm hired by the city to cover up this disgrace and you still refuse to hold him or the other officers involved in this tragedy accountable.’”
“I was feeling depressed and cynical about city government, and then, I tuned in Mayor Jacob Frey’s State of the City speech.
“He is so gorgeous, so bright, so optimistic. You get lost in his deep blue eyes as he talks about the heroism of our everyday workers and how the city will endure. The State of the City, he says, is Unbound. Then he proceeded to detail how the city is bound because it’s losing $100 to $200 million in revenue because of COVID-19, and how there are too many homeless, and how they set aside $3 million for rental subsidies and they need five times that amount. But he’s so cute, and they’re going to have a baby in September, and you get lost in those big blue eyes, and that earnest look, that look that says he’s really trying, really, really trying.”
But I was not convinced that he was really serious. I concluded:
“Racist and fascist elements in the Minneapolis Police Department are a threat to all of us, especially right now. The mayor and City Council must find the courage and the intestinal fortitude to take control of the MPD before the MPD begins to take control of us.”
Two weeks later George Floyd was murdered by the Minneapolis Police Department.
The most dramatic moment in the 2025 DFL City Convention had to be in the Question/Answer part when Frey was asked, “What is your response to the officer who killed Amir Locke being placed in a leadership role in the MPD? How do we insure that officers who have violated community trust are held accountable and not promoted?”
Frey answered, “I support my Chief.”
The audience erupted in “Boooo!”
They knew Frey was passing the buck.
In his answer to that question, Fateh said, “Police will be held accountable.”
He wants an alternative to business as usual with the MPD, and so does everyone else who has looked seriously at the problems of over-policing. Perhaps police should be accompanied by marriage counselors or social workers. Armed officers quickly escalate a situation when the best solution is to de-escalate. He believes, “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 is largely responsible for legislation to make public college free for students whose families make less than $80,000 annually.
But he is remembered both in the minds of many and deep in the hearts of some as the man who fought successfully (in spite of Walz’s veto) to improve wages and benefits for Uber and Lyft drivers. When his original bill passed the Legislature, the drivers carried him around the Capitol on their shoulders like a quarterback who had just won the Super Bowl. After the veto, the Legislature didn’t want to touch that issue again. They needed to end the Session. Fateh walked out. He wouldn’t come back until the DFL majorities passed legislation setting pay minimums and new insurance protections for Uber and Lyft drivers. Dziedzic in the Senate and Hortman in the House agreed. It passed both houses in the Legislature and Walz signed it.
The new generation of leadership of the Twin City Democratic Socialists of America and the DSA-endorsed majority of the City Council strongly support him. The City Council is still upset at Frey’s veto of the budget last year where he tried to stop funding for neighborhood projects in favor of more money for downtown planning.
Life-long Democrats are upset that socialists seem to be taking over the DFL—“Why don’t they start their own Party?”
First, there is no Democratic Party in Minnesota. There is a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. That was a new political party started by Hubert Humphrey in 1944 when he convinced the leadership of the Minnesota Democratic Party to merge with the Farmer Labor Party. That way, a Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate could win statewide—maybe even win the race for U S Senator in 1948. Which Humphrey did.
The Democratic Party was mostly urban and pro-labor in the North and deeply racist in the South. The Farmer-Labor Party was a populist party inspired by the Non-Partisan League in North Dakota. North Dakota has a state bank thanks to the vision of the Non-Partisan League in the 1920’s. At their 1934 Farmer-Labor Convention, Governor Floyd B. Olson told the delegates, “I am what I want to be. I am a radical. I am not a liberal.” The 1934 Convention went wild and the Preamble to their platform said, “Capitalism has failed, and we mean to establish a Cooperative Commonwealth.” That’s the political party welded to the Democratic Party.
When liberals and radicals work together (see Biden and Bernie) they can get elected. When they work against each other (see Hillary vs Bernie and Kamala campaigning with Liz Cheney) they lose to Republicans.
Minneapolis is a one-party town. Politics is dominated by the DFL. But there are stark contrasts and vigorous debates between factions. Jacob Frey represents the downtown business interests, and he’s “liberal to a degree” (in the words of Bob Dylan). Omar Fateh represents a growing socialist movement that includes a majority on the City Council. DeWayne Davis, a retired minister, is more moderate, and Jazz Hampton is a quite liberal local techno entrepreneur and pro bono lawyer. The three had a button made, with their three faces on it, saying vote for any one of the three but not for Frey. The die was cast. The three campaigns had met and agreed to support each other against Frey.
In past DFL conventions, if there are a lot of candidates, candidates (once they are eliminated) will sometimes maneuver the votes of their delegates in subsequent ballots to block any other candidate from getting the 60% needed for endorsement.
This time it was different.
On the first ballot, Fateh got about 44%, Frey got about 32% and Davis got 19.93%, 0.07% short of what he needed to get on the second ballot.
It was between Frey and Fateh on the second ballot. Time was running out. The first ballot had taken more than two hours to count. People in Frey’s campaign urged their delegates to walk out in the hopes of denying a quorum, but they didn’t have enough delegates to eliminate half the votes. The Chair called for a vote by delegates holding up their name tags/badges. It was clear Fateh had more than 60%. He was declared the winner and was endorsed.
Of course, the Frey people contested the legitimacy of the vote.
DeWayne Davis accepted the endorsement.
Fateh said. “Yes, we secured the DFL endorsement, but we know the status quo are going to do anything and everything to maintain power. They’ll have all the money in the world, they’ll have all the influence in the world … but they don’t have you.”
It will be an exciting campaign this fall, testing whether grassroots political activists in the DFL can defeat the downtown business interests and the landlord lobby.
Stay tuned!
