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HOW OMAR FATEH BROUGHT HIS OWN ‘MAMDANI MOMENT’ TO MINNEAPOLIS  
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Owen Jakel
September 9, 2025
The Progressive
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_ In both Minneapolis and New York City, democratic socialist
municipal candidates have made strides—and faced backlash from the
Democratic establishment. _

Omar Fateh speaks at his mayoral campaign launch at Minneapolis City
Hall, December 2024, Taylor Dahlin (CC BY 2.0).

 

When the Minneapolis affiliate of the Minnesota
Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party met for its annual convention on
July 19, chief among its agenda items was to decide whether or not to
endorse a candidate in the upcoming Minneapolis mayoral
election—something the Minneapolis DFL, which aligns itself with the
Democratic Party and Democratic National Committee (DNC) on the
national level, has not done since 2009. But to the surprise of many,
a candidate for mayor received
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the 60 percent of the vote needed to secure the Minneapolis
affiliate’s’s endorsement: second-term state senator Omar Fateh,
who identifies as a democratic socialist.

Almost immediately following the unprecedented endorsement, Mayor
Jacob Frey, the politically moderate second-term incumbent, challenged
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the results of the endorsement vote, citing an “extraordinarily high
number of missing or uncounted votes” and flaws in the Minnesota
DFL’s electronic voting system. Frey’s campaign claims
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another candidate, DeWayne Davis, was erroneously eliminated after the
first round of voting, thus invalidating the second round, but Fateh
told _The Nation,_ “No matter what happened that day, the outcome
would’ve been the same, and we would’ve ended with our
endorsement.” Fateh’s supporters say that after the first round,
Frey voters attempted unsuccessfully to break the established minimum
number of delegates needed to conduct a vote by leaving the room.
While it is unclear exactly how many delegates took part in the final
vote, which was conducted by raising badges rather than paper vote
tallies, Fateh received the clear majority of support among those
remaining.

“It’s important to get out the narrative about what actually
happened [at the DFL convention], which is that there was a clear
majority in favor of Fateh,” says Revmira Beeby, a co-chair of the
Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America. “Frey’s supporters
saw that, and they tried to stage a walkout . . . . [They are] going
to do whatever they can to delegitimize the democratic process, but
ultimately, the way we overcome that is just by continuing to do the
work, continuing to talk to people, continuing to mobilize
people.” 

On August 21, after conducting an investigation, the state-level
Minnesota DFL rescinded
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the Minneapolis affiliate’s endorsement of Fateh, sparking criticism
of the state party’s intervention in the local affiliate’s
democratic process. Many convention attendees who supported Fateh
claim that Frey’s accusations of vote discrepancies are
disingenuous. A press release
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Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America read, “Mayor Jacob Frey
is directly copying from Donald Trump’s playbook—if you can’t
win, subvert the democratic process.” With or without the
Minneapolis DFL endorsement, Fateh will appear on the ballot in the
city’s November 4 open election, which allows multiple candidates
from the same party to run in a nonpartisan race.  

Fateh is not the only insurgent leftwing candidate whose momentum at
the city level has garnered backlash from the Democratic
establishment. After Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist state
assemblymember in Queens, garnered a surprise victory
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in the New York City Democratic primary for mayor in June, many
high-level Democrats, including New York Governor Kathy Hochul
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U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand
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and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, declined
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to endorse Mamdani in the general election against former New York
Governor Andrew Cuomo and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams’s independent
candidacies. But despite the rejection by his own party’s top brass,
Mamdani’s commanding lead
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in the general election polling has progressives in other cities
across the country asking
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how his success might be replicated elsewhere. 

Local electoral strategy has been of  particular importance to the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a national political
organization whose New York City chapter, of which Mamdani has been a
member
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since 2017, played a significant role
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primary win. Fateh has been a registered member of the Twin Cities DSA
since 2019. In July, Beeby told _The Progressive _that like
Mamdani’s victory in the New York City primary, Fateh’s
endorsement by the Minneapolis DFL represented a major triumph for his
campaign. But Beeby was cautious, already anticipating the subsequent
backlash from the party establishment.  

The Twin Cities DSA chapter, Beeby says, has put significant time and
effort into local elections. “We host regular doorknocks with Fateh,
but also with our other endorsed candidates,” they explain,
“including Aisha Chughtai [[link removed]], who
represents Ward 10, and a park board candidate, Michael Wilson
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active in also mobilizing Fateh supporters to voice their support at
the Minneapolis DFL convention on June 19. 

Although there is a lot of recent excitement about Fateh, Beeby says,
the Twin Cities DSA chapter has long focused on campaigning for local
candidates who they believe can collectively build a more just future
for Minneapolis. In 2021, their endorsements and campaigning
strategies helped elect local democratic socialists to the Minneapolis
City Council, including Chughtai, Jason Chavez
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Wonsley, an independent socialist who represents Minneapolis’s
second ward and has consistently pushed back
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against Mayor Frey’s agenda, notes that these electoral victories
are the result of long-term efforts to build progressive institutional
power. “The most important thing that I took away from Senator Omar
Fateh’s DFL endorsement—that followed Zohran’s primary victory
in New York—is that it didn’t happen overnight,” Wonsley tells
_The Progressive_. “It took years of socialist organizations like
DSA talking to their neighbors, talking to fellow union members,
talking to relatives. And not only talking to them, but engaging them
around concrete, material ideas.”  

DSA’s involvement isn’t the only similarity between Mamdani’s
and Fateh’s unexpected successes. Mamdani’s campaign took
advantage of New York City’s ranked-choice voting system in the
Democratic primary by forming an alliance
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candidate Brad Lander and urging voters
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to leave Cuomo and Adams off their ballots entirely. Fateh has
similarly taken advantage of Minneapolis’s ranked-choice system,
calling on Minneapolis residents to not rank
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strategy used previously by Frey’s opponents in 2021. In his
campaign platform, Fateh has emphasized
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Mamdani’s, such as addressing the housing crisis through rent
stabilization and increased affordable housing supply, and instituting
policies to reform the Minneapolis Police Department.

Not everyone within Minnesota’s Democratic establishment is on board
with Fateh’s vision. Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz
announced in late July that he would endorse Frey
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In March, Democratic U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar endorsed
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As Wonsley points out, backlash from both conservatives
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and mainstream Democrats against leftwing candidates is nothing new.
After Minneapolis became the focal point of nationwide protest
following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Department
(MPD) officer Derek Chauvin, rightwing
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and centrist
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politicians mobilized to undermine the popular momentum for sustained
change. In 2021, Yes 4 Minneapolis
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initiative to replace the MPD with a reimagined Department of Public
Safety, was rejected
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by voters after concerted efforts by both Democrats and Republicans to
delegitimize the movement. In years since, both Democrats and
Republicans nationwide have engaged in fearmongering
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around “defund the police” messaging, which drew popular support
in 2020. 

But Wonsley doesn’t see the Yes 4 Minneapolis initiative’s loss as
a failure. “I’m proud of Minneapolis,” she says. “Since the
loss of the referendum, our fight for a transformed future and a
mandate on policing in society hasn’t stopped.” While both parties
have stoked fear
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and distanced
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themselves from proposals to transfer city budget funds away from
police departments in favor of funding mental health care services and
social services, some leftwing candidates have continued to embrace
those initiatives. Mamdani has made his Department of Community Safety
proposal
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which would fully fund non-police crisis management services alongside
investment in mental health care and homelessness services, a central
pillar of his campaign platform. Similarly, Fateh has promised to
implement the existing Safe and Thriving Communities Plan
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which he says Frey has failed to do, as well as diverting
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calls that don’t require police response.

“It’s really important to have candidates who are actually willing
to stand by their beliefs,” Beeby explains. “People want
candidates who are genuine and honest and who are going to fight for
things without triangulating with the political establishment.
That’s what people see in politics every day, and it’s why people
are checked out of politics.” 

Beeby also describes Wonsley’s trajectory as evidence that such
tactics work. Wonsley campaigned in 2021 on shifting police budgets
towards city services like access to housing and mental health
support, and has since been re-elected to her seat. “When you’re a
politician, you come to learn that there is actually no right way to
frame a proposal that essentially challenges the status quo,”
Wonsley says. “So much of organizing in the political space is tied
to grassroots organizing. I solid as a socialist advocating against a
genocide because I have the movement behind me. I still feel confident
in critiquing our current policing operations . . . because the
movement is still there.” 

While the Minneapolis DFL endorsement may have been stripped from
Fateh, his campaign remains confident that Minneapolis will elect
Fateh in November. “This is exactly what Minneapolis voters are sick
of,” Fateh said in a press conference
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just hours after the endorsement was stripped. “The insider games,
the backroom decisions, and feeling like our voice doesn't matter in
our own city.” Despite the backlash against him, Fateh could still
win what will likely be a close race
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in a city whose progressive movement is eager to build on all that
seemed possible in 2020.

_Owen Jakel is an editorial intern at The Progressive. Recently
graduated with a bachelor's degree in history and anthropology, Owen
is back in the Midwest and is interested in bringing his lessons from
college to a new environment that has the possibility to positively
influence progressive politics. He was a reporter for his college's
student newspaper, the Whitman Wire, and a member of Students for
Justice in Palestine. _

_Since 1909, The Progressive has aimed to amplify voices of dissent
and those under-represented in the mainstream, with a goal of
championing grassroots progressive politics. Our bedrock values are
nonviolence and freedom of speech._

_Based in Madison, Wisconsin, we publish on national politics,
culture, and events including U.S. foreign policy; we also focus on
issues of particular importance to the heartland. Two flagship
projects of The Progressive include Public School Shakedown
[[link removed]], which covers efforts
to resist the privatization of public education, and The Progressive
Media Project [[link removed]], aiming to diversify our
nation’s op-ed pages. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. _

* Omar Fateh
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* Minneapolis
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* Democratic Farmer Labor Party
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* Democratic Socialists of Ame
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