BY ED FELIEN
The Frey campaign is serving sour grapes to anyone who cares to buy their analysis of what happened at the DFL City Convention that endorsed Omar Fateh for Mayor.
Last month we detailed the process by which thousands of people in April elected some of their neighbors to represent them at a Ward Convention to endorse a candidate to represent them on the City Council, and they elected delegates to represent them at the City Convention. Those delegates elected Omar Fateh to represent their interests as Mayor of Minneapolis.
Was it a smooth convention?
Absolutely not!
The elaborate registration process caused the Convention to begin an hour late. The complicated voting system took three hours to count the ballots on the vote for mayor.
How and why did it get so cumbersome and convoluted?
It used to be the DFL was divided between hacks and flakes. The hacks just wanted to continue business as usual, and the flakes wanted to change the world. The flakes would gravitate to the platform committee so they could get the convention to ratify their holy causes. The hacks would gravitate to the rules committee because they knew if they if they could rig the rules they could run the convention.
Assuming the Frey campaign knew how to count, they knew they didn’t have 60% of the votes to win the endorsement, and, since they didn’t want Fateh to get the endorsement, then their best hope was to run out the clock and adjourn the convention without an endorsement. Delay. Delay. Delay.
If that was their plan, it didn’t quite work out.
After the first ballot, everyone realized they didn’t have time to go through that elaborate tabulation again, so they agreed to vote by holding up their registration badges. DeWayne Davis didn’t have enough votes to get to a second ballot. Frey had 32%. Fateh had 44% and Davis had not quite 20%. Davis had enough votes to block an endorsement by swinging his votes to Frey, but he and Fateh and Jazz Hampton had all agreed to support each other rather than vote for Frey. Davis delivered on his agreement and Fateh got endorsed.
The General Election on Nov. 4 will be ranked choice voting.
Probably neither Frey nor Fateh will get the more than 50% necessary to win on the first ballot, so the outcome will depend upon whom the voters select as their second choice. If Davis is eliminated on the first ballot and his voters’ second choice is Fateh, then there is a good chance Fateh will be elected Mayor.
At the City Convention there were reports of some antagonism by Fateh supporters toward Davis supporters. That ultra-left behavior is self-destructive. Either they didn’t know what they were doing and wanted to show off how progressive they were, or they knew what they were doing (driving a wedge between Davis and Fateh) because they wanted Davis supporters to support Frey on the second ballot.
It will have to be understood by the Fateh campaign that they cannot win without support from the more moderate liberal base. The best way for the Fateh campaign to acknowledge that would be to announce cooperation with Davis and his supporters in a new Fateh administration. This would assure nervous liberals and readers of the Star Tribune that a Fateh administration would be all-inclusive.
There are necessary reforms that must be made. Both Davis and Fateh are in favor of full accountability of the Minneapolis Police Department.
The new mayor will appoint a Commissioner of Public Safety who will hold the MPD accountable and help develop a new vision of public safety. If Fateh is elected, he should agree to appoint DeWayne Davis, and if Davis is elected he should agree to appoint Fateh.
To ensure accountability and to restore public confidence in the MPD, the Commissioner should hold a public hearing and issue findings regarding the killings of young Black men.
Let’s get all the facts out there.
The Statue of Liberty holds a torch to light the corners where secrets are hidden.
Let’s examine the case of Terrance Franklin, killed in a basement in South Minneapolis. A jury in District Court found the city guilty of his wrongful death. It cost the city a million dollars. The jury believed Officer Lucas Peterson was lying. Shouldn’t a new Commissioner of Public Safety read the testimony in the wrongful death suit and compare it with the police reports filed by the officers on the scene at the time?
The City of Minneapolis is ready for a brand new day, and the best way to prepare for that is to examine and correct the mistakes of yesterday.
