BY ED FELIEN
What does it look like?
If it were under the old rules, where the candidate with the most votes wins, Frey would likely beat Fateh. He’ll probably get 40% of the vote. Fateh will probably get something like 34% of the vote. Davis will probably get something like 20% of the vote. And Jazz Hampton and everyone else would split the remaining 6%.
Under ranked choice voting (RCV), if no candidate gets 50% plus one on the first ballot, then the top two candidates remain and those candidates who were eliminated on the first ballot get to have their second choice counted. And, if no one gets more than 50% on the second ballot, then the third choice candidates are counted from the voters whose first two choices were eliminated.
Does that make sense?
It’s complicated and many voters probably won’t get beyond voting once for their favorite candidate. But that’s the strategy of the Anyone But Frey coalition of Fateh, Davis and Hampton. If it worked perfectly, then Fateh would win with his 34% plus Davis’s 20% plus Hampton’s 3%.
But some experienced observers are a bit more cynical. They think there’s an eighty percent chance Frey will win, a fifteen percent chance Fateh will win, and a 5% chance Davis will win. They think many people won’t understand ranked choice voting and will vote for only one candidate, and Frey will hugely outspend Fateh, and Frey has been running a fierce smear campaign against Fateh.
They say Fateh took campaign donations from people involved in the Feeding Our Future scandal. He returned the money. At the time he said:
“As a senator, I did my due diligence and reached out to the Department of Education; at no time did I advocate on behalf of a specific provider or organization. In my conversations with the administration, I was repeatedly told they did not suspect fraud was occurring.”
“As we now know, some of the providers were lying to me, and have since been tried and convicted of crimes. I am furious about the theft of public funds, the damage to community, and most of all, the depriving of the children and families who were supposed to receive support during a pandemic.”
What the Frey campaign doesn’t say is that Frey intervened directly on behalf of Feeding Our Future when the Department of Education became suspicious in 2021 and stopped payments. Frey’s Senior Policy Aide for the ten years of his mayoral tenure has been Abdi Salah, the brother of the owner of Safari Restaurant, one of the hubs for the Feeding Our Future organization; he has since resigned. Frey hasn’t commented directly on this, but a spokesman for him said, “This was one of the deepest and most offensive betrayals of public trust in our state’s history. The mayor appreciates the U.S. Attorney’s Office for its diligent and thorough prosecution of the case.”
Frey also returned the campaign donations.
A lot of the confusion in the campaign is because Fateh identifies as a democratic socialist.
He was asked by Liza Featherstone of Jacobin magazine, “What does socialism mean to you?”
He answered, “It’s pretty clear-cut. You want to take care of everyone.”
Liza wrote:
Asked what he hopes to have accomplished by the time he leaves office as mayor, Fateh doesn’t hesitate. He aspires to make Minneapolis “a true union city” with “labor standards that meet the moment,” a city in which the unhoused are housed, and getting the services they need, including mental health care and addiction treatment, a city in which young people have after-school activities, summer jobs and schools in which they can thrive; an end to the pollution and consequently high rates of asthma afflicting working-class and poor communities; and a safer city, one in which, when a person calls 911, they get the response they need, and in time.
“All of that is possible,” says Fateh with a smile.
