Last July, thousands of delegates packed into Target Center in Minneapolis for the city’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party convention. In an upset, Minnesota State Senator Omar Fateh won the endorsement with the support of more than 60 percent of delegates—the first DFL endorsement over an incumbent running for Minneapolis mayor since the party’s founding in 1944. Delegates supporting current mayor Jacob Frey, who initially secured 31 percent, staged a last-minute walkout in protest of the voting system, to no avail in the moment. Shortly after, Frey announced that he would continue to campaign for reelection without the endorsement.
But one month later, the parent Minnesota DFL committee handed down a ruling revoking Fateh’s endorsement[1] and barred Minneapolis DFL from holding another endorsing convention this year.
Fateh spoke with me about his DFL endorsement and the current state of the race, his work in the state legislature, and the broader fight against Trump and the far-right’s MAGA agenda.
Peter Lucas: Can you explain what happened with the unendorsement?
Omar Fateh: Twenty-eight party insiders and establishment Democrats, which included many Frey donors and supporters, met privately in committee to overturn the will of the voters. This was a political decision and not one that was based on facts presented to the committee. Multiple members should have recused themselves to make this a fairer process, given their connections to the Frey campaign.
The fact that they did not recuse themselves speaks to what type of process this was. Our campaign and supporters see this for what it is: the disenfranchisement of thousands of Minneapolis caucus goers and the delegates who represented all of us at convention. These distractions will definitely not slow us in reaching every voter and standing up for our neighbors to fight back against Trump and continue to build our broad coalition to win on November 4.
No matter what happened that day, the outcome would’ve been the same, and we would’ve ended with our endorsement. Our campaign out-organized the competition and more importantly, residents made clear that they’re ready for their new leadership at city hall.
PL: What is their exact complaint? Is there any merit to the ruling?
OF: Their complaint was that there were systemic errors in the process that resulted in our endorsement and the incumbent losing. Now, what we know is that the Frey campaign used delay tactics to try to stall the convention and run out the clock, which did not work. The Frey campaign only received support from less than a third of the convention delegates—well below the 40 percent needed to block.
Every step of the way, each campaign and all of the delegates were made aware of what was happening, and the delegation had the opportunity to decide on whether or not they wanted to redo the first vote or continue. Overwhelmingly, the delegation decided to continue with the process. We also know that the Frey campaign led their delegates to walk out, hoping that they could break quorum, but did not have the numbers to do so. In the end, the overwhelming majority of the delegation raised their badges to endorse our campaign.
PL: A group of Minnesota-based elected officials, including some who have not yet endorsed you, have condemned[2] the DFL’s decision. What do you make of that?
OF: I want to thank our Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and our local elected officials for voicing their support in the letter and showing that they are clear-eyed about what happened. I want to also highlight that the support that my campaign has seen in Minneapolis since the overturning of the endorsement has been extremely strong. People have shown that they are tired of backroom decisions that undermine the voice of the everyday working people.
Decisions like these fracture the party and reduce the faith in the systems we use. It hurts our collective efforts to win not only these local elections but also the midterms and beyond. I believe this will have a real impact on the trust and faith in the party process from not just our supporters but DFLers in general.
PL: Turning to the general election, what are the issues that Minneapolis is facing?
OF: Affordability is one of the main issues I hear about all the time. For me, addressing that starts with raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour by 2028. It also means passing a rent stabilization policy, incentivizing new construction, and protecting tenants.
A lot of constituents have voiced their concerns about having a hostile federal government with Donald Trump in the executive and a Republican trifecta, with a Supreme Court that’s backing him. We need a mayor that’s going to stand up to protect all of our communities against the hostile federal government. We’ve always said, especially after the raid in our district, that MPD should never cooperate or collaborate with ICE. We deserve a mayor that will be honest and transparent and won’t run from issues relating to the federal government.
Another issue we’ve been campaigning on is public safety. We need to diversify our public safety response. A recent city report came out showing that nearly half of MPD calls actually don’t require an armed response, which tells us that we need to fund non-police programs like mental health responders, crisis teams, and youth programs. We need to fix the broken public safety system that our current mayor promised to reform after the murder of George Floyd. Our message is simple: When you call 911, everyone deserves an appropriate, timely response.
PL: Those who spearheaded the unendorsement have raised concerns that your campaign might hurt candidates outside of Minneapolis or less progressive candidates.
OF: We won the endorsement precisely because we’re speaking to the needs of working people. Outside of the party also, our campaign has gotten a lot of hate from conservatives and MAGA partisans like Charlie Kirk, Karl Rove, and Lauren Boebert; they’re trying to say that we’re too radical or too far-left. But what they’re really saying is that our campaign is too friendly toward renters and workers, too close with immigrants and people that are just trying to make ends meet.
When these extreme elements come after us, it means we’re doing something right. We shouldn’t be afraid of that as a DFL party. We know that the right-wingers are going after us because they are scared of the working-class, multiracial coalition that’s being built in Minneapolis.
But at the same time, the policies that I’ve been running on and successfully promoting as a state senator aren’t radical or extreme ideas. Things like tuition-free college for working-class families is not radical. Worker protections and increased wages for our ride share drivers are not radical. The legalization of fentanyl testing strips to keep people alive is not radical.
I have successfully passed legislation with support from progressives to Blue Dogs and even Republicans. It’s been a bipartisan effort, and so if these policies and ideas aren’t too extreme for the Blue Dogs or Republicans, they should not be too extreme for a progressive city like Minneapolis.
PL: PACs supporting your opponent have accepted donations from conservatives. Are you?
OF: No. I don’t share the same values of screwing over our workers and residents or siding with folks that spew hate in order to maintain power. We’ve seen the establishment will go to great lengths to maintain power, including accepting those donations from Republicans. Accepting that money is a concern for anyone who advocates for everyday people, not just the wealthy few.
As I said before, they may have the wealthy donors, they may have the glossy mailers, but they don’t have the support of the everyday people that have been showing up, that have come out to caucus in large numbers, showed up to the convention, powered us through the endorsement and are going to power us through November.
PL: Minneapolis and Minnesota writ large have garnered recognition as being a progressive hub in the country. What makes Minneapolis so amenable to progressive ideas or values or legislation?
OF: It’s the people that are caring and compassionate that makes Minneapolis what it is. And that is reflected in our progressive city council, which has been fighting for working people in each of their wards. But it has also experienced an adversarial relationship with the mayor, who has stalled and blocked progress at every turn. People want the city to fight for a vision that reflects their values. But we just don’t have a mayor that’s willing or able to do so.
PL: Have there been times where you feel like the voter base or the city council itself has been to the left of the mayor, and he’s stepped in with decisive opposition or vetoed progressive plans?
OF: When the rideshare drivers organized at the state level and city level and spoke about their experiences with deactivations and decreasing wages, the mayor said he would side with the workers, the rideshare drivers. And what did he do? He vetoed their legislation twice and sided with Uber and Lyft when they called.
When it came time to protect our workers with the labor standards board, with the unions working diligently to make sure that that was getting passed, he fought hard against it and vetoed it as well.
There were several different ward projects that aimed to reverse decades of environmental harm and establish more green jobs and youth programs, but the mayor vetoed, calling them pet projects. These are a few of many instances in which our city council has tried to stand on the right side of things, but the mayor has stalled progress.
PL: You’re an advocate of rent control. How does that fit into your vision of addressing homelessness and affordability?
OF: Our city is more than capable of accommodating everyone who wants to call Minneapolis their home. We can combine a strong housing policy with dignity for our unsheltered residents. We’ve been campaigning on a housing-first approach that includes things like preventing rental evictions, which we know are the largest contributor to homelessness, by establishing a just-cause eviction policy. We can work with the city council to pass and implement safe outdoor spaces.
We need to increase funding for shelters and move away from the current model of bulldozing encampments, block by block; we need to take a more compassionate approach, foregrounding public health and human dignity, rather than the mayor’s expensive practice of criminalization.
Instead of criminalizing and bulldozing and evicting encampments with nowhere for the residents to go—the current mayoral policy of out of sight, out of mind—we can provide them with access to alternative locations and access to essential services.
Anytime that the mayor has bulldozed encampments, they do things like throw away their social security cards, birth certificates, and other key identifiers for social workers to locate and assist them. We need to also establish low-barrier job opportunities for people so that they can earn a source of income.
Another issue is the spread of infectious diseases within our unhoused populations that need to be addressed. People need portable bathrooms, hand-washing stations, and storage for their personal belongings.
PL: You’ve championed legislation that provides a minimum wage and strong labor protections for rideshare drivers, and, in the process. Can you tell us about that?
OF: In the summer of 2022, I received calls from a few rideshare drivers about the challenges that they’re facing, from wages to deactivations to insurance. We scheduled a meeting with a few other state legislators and city-council members to talk about how we can tackle those issues.
I went into that meeting thinking that we would have a roundtable discussion of maybe five, 10, 20 people. But when I arrived, there were over 400 drivers ready to talk about their experiences and share horror stories from the job. We listened to them and said if we got the Democratic trifecta next cycle, then we can absolutely make this happen. And so they got on board.
They started organizing across the state, from the metro area to greater Minnesota, talking to neighbors, driving voters to the polls, talking to folks saying we can make this happen and actually do something to support workers with the Democratic trifecta. And so we drafted legislation that would increase their wages, that would provide protections around wrongful deactivations and insurance.
We were very intentional about the coalition that we were building. When I first drafted the legislation, I had co-authors that were not just from the Twin Cities Metro, but from greater Minnesota, including Blue Dogs and a Republican author as well, to demonstrate broad support.
PL: What was the response from the big corporations this would affect?
OF: We immediately faced strong headwinds because Uber and Lyft invested a lot of money to spread propaganda and lies, like threatening that they would pull out of Minnesota. In reality, in every instance of policy change related to wages or things of that nature, they’ve never pulled out of any location. We were confident that they would not leave money on the table and, even with the legislative changes, that they would still be profitable.
Unfortunately, it was vetoed in 2023, which hurt, especially for the drivers who were so excited and hopeful after getting it passed in the state house and senate. But they regrouped and came back the following session. Again, they showed up by the hundreds to every committee hearing, spoke to members in both the house and senate, and met with the community to secure broader support. They marched in the capitol with other unions like the nurses, showing worker solidarity, and we were grateful to finally sign it into law in 2024.
We’ve since heard from many drivers that it has been life changing. They’re no longer experiencing those wrongful deactivations, they’re making a little bit more money, and they feel more valued than before.
PL: Many in the establishment have raised questions about the left’s ability to govern. Do you feel like this is proof of concept for your coalition’s ability to govern?
OF: Yes, absolutely. The major progressive wins that I’ve been able to accomplish at the capitol has been the support of progressives, Blue Dogs, and in a bipartisan way with Republicans as well. As the chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee, I have been tasked with managing the budget of all our college universities. The budget target we got last biennium was around $1.1 billion, and the city budget is roughly $1.8 billion, so I roughly managed a similar amount of money in a strategic way to ensure that our dollars are being put to good use.
With that, we were able to accomplish things like the North Star Promise, which provides tuition-free college for working-class families. We got the North Star Promise Plus, an additional stipend for things like housing, transportation, and childcare. We had the Student Parent Support Initiative, which secured grant funding for students that are expecting parents. To tackle campus hunger, we expanded the Hunger Free Campus grant program, so that we can have a food shelf for every single campus statewide. We expanded the 24-7 mental health hub for resources for students across the state so that if they’re experiencing any mental health crisis, they can get the services they need.
We were very strategic going line by line on the budget to allocate the dollars in the way that benefited the students and helped us achieve our key goals of reversing the decade plus of declining enrollment on all of our campuses, increasing our retention rates, and addressing our workforce shortages and to make sure that students are able to plug into our critical areas of need in our workforce.
PL: You’re a progressive, of which there are many in Minneapolis and across the country, but you’re also one of a growing number of DSA candidates across the country. What’s the distinction between the two?
OF: Like many people, I was inspired by the success of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 run and developed a stronger understanding, with a new label of what my political beliefs were, which fell in line with DSA. I’ve seen the term progressive go from having a specific meaning to becoming a spectrum where you can be a progressive, but you don’t believe in healthcare for all, or you can be a progressive but you can take donations from big oil companies, or you can be a progressive but not stand with workers or immigrants.
So I joined and am proud to be supported by DSA, because it’s clear what we believe: Housing is a human right, healthcare is a human right, clean air and clean water are human rights. We believe in a world where people don’t have to worry about if their most basic needs are met, and in fact, it’s a right to have those basic needs met.
We’ve seen the other side try to brand DSA as too extreme, but if you remove those labels, people generally want to see their schools fully funded, a public safety system that works for everyone, and workers getting a livable wage. When you stop the fear mongering, you see that people actually agree.
PL: What is your plan to fight back against Trump, especially with escalating attacks on immigrants?
OF: It’s pertinent that our city serves as the front line of defence, working hand-in-hand with the county and state, as the president wages a war on our most vulnerable people. We have to partner with immigrant rights organizations and support initiatives aimed at ensuring and achieving full equality and protections for all of our residents by expanding efforts around legal counsel and know your rights training and establishing clear consequences if MPD collaborates with ICE.
We can’t be a sanctuary city in name only. City council needs to be notified anytime the federal government is engaging with our city. They cannot be left in the dark and because of the adversarial relationship between mayor and the city council, there are times in which certain information isn’t disseminated in a timely manner.
Our immigrant residents are teachers, nurses, small business owners, politicians—all vital parts of our community and the engine of our local economy. We can’t function as a society by isolating or discriminating against others based on identity.
PL: And how does that fit into your broader vision for public safety?
OF: We need a public safety system that serves everyone. We need to expand social programs and alternatives to policing like our behavioral crisis response team and mental health workers.
We also want to ensure that our law-enforcement officers can focus on addressing violent crime and that we are more strategic in our public safety response. I think that’s the kind of thing that the city is asking for, and that’s why I worked really hard at the capitol last biennial to bring in $19 million in public safety aid for Minneapolis.
Our residents understand that being pro police accountability doesn’t make you anti public safety. We can have a police force that addresses violent crime, but at the same time, you don’t need an armed officer for every single response. Just like when you have a house fire, you don’t expect a police officer to come and put out the fire. You’re expecting a firefighter to do that. Similarly, when there’s a mental health crisis, you can expect someone that’s more appropriately equipped to handle the situation.
References
- ^ revoking Fateh’s endorsement (www.thenation.com)
- ^ condemned (ilhanomar.com)