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PEOPLE “ARE TIRED OF BACKROOM DECISIONS”: A CONVERSATION WITH
MINNEAPOLIS’S OMAR FATEH  
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Peter Lucas
September 5, 2025
The Nation
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_ The Minnesota state senator won Minneapolis’s
Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party endorsement for mayor—but the
state-level party revoked it. _

In July 2025, Omar Fateh won the Minneapolis Democratic-Farmer-Labor
Party endorsement for mayor, which the state party revoked., Glen
Stubbe / Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images

 

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
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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_

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
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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 fearmongering, 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.

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