The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party’s Constitution, Bylaws & Rules Committee (CBRC) voted to revoke its endorsement of state Sen. Omar Fateh (D) for Minneapolis mayor, drawing objections from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and more than a dozen local officials who argued the move overturned the delegate vote at last month’s convention.
Minnesota state Sen. Omar Fateh, a democratic socialist and the first Somali American elected to the state senate, saw his Minneapolis mayoral campaign shaken on Thursday when the committee voted to revoke his endorsement.
The DFL Party Chairman Richard Carlbom explained that this decision was made based on verified voting errors at the convention. “After a thoughtful and transparent review of the challenges, the Constitution, Bylaws & Rules Committee found substantial failures in the Minneapolis Convention’s voting process on July 19th, including an acknowledgement that a mayoral candidate was errantly eliminated from contention,” he said, according to ABC 5 KSTP.
“As a result, the Constitution, Bylaws & Rules Committee has vacated the mayoral endorsement,” Carlbom concluded.
Darwin Forsyth, former spokesman for Mayor Jacob Frey’s reelection campaign who has publicly documented the convention’s glaring anomalies, declared the DFL’s decision a vindication of his claims — calling it “damning” evidence of “brazen cheating” in an X post (which he deleted after pushback):
Forsyth backtracked and said “misconduct” is a better term to describe the convention debacle.
Mayor Jacob Frey took a more conciliatory tone, praising the Party that erroneously ousted him for giving his campaign a second chance, hoping to regain lost momentum among Minneapolis voters:
In a video posted to X, Fateh called the decision the product of “28 party insiders” meeting behind closed doors. “This group was comprised of non-Minneapolis residents, Mayor Frey supporters, and even donors,” Fateh said. “This is exactly what Minneapolis voters are sick of, the insider games, the backroom decisions, and feeling like our voice doesn’t matter in our own city.”
Fateh claimed the action disenfranchised “thousands of Minneapolis caucus-goers and the delegates who represented all of us on convention day,” adding, “we’re still in this fight, and we’re going to win.” His campaign urged supporters to volunteer and to donate.
Omar and a coalition of state legislators, county commissioners, city council members, and school board officials issued a joint statement condemning the committee’s decision. “It is inexcusable to overturn the results weeks after the convention because board members did not like the outcome,” the group wrote. They warned the move “sets an extremely dangerous precedent,” undermines the party’s endorsement process, and would discourage grassroots participation.
The statement highlighted Fateh’s status as “the first Black mayoral candidate to be DFL-endorsed in the last three decades” and argued the decision “will be a stain on our party for years to come.” Among the 16 signatories were State Senators Zaynab Mohamed and Doron Clark, State Reps. Aisha Gomez, Fue Lee, and Mohamud Noor, as well as Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne and Vice President Aisha Chughtai.
The endorsement was issued at the Minneapolis DFL convention in July, where delegates selected Fateh as their choice to challenge incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey (D). Fateh has built his campaign around pledges to ban the use of tear gas and rubber bullets by police, replace traditional law enforcement responses with alternative emergency teams, raise the city’s minimum wage to $20 per hour by 2028, and lobby for a local income tax targeting high earners. He has also pushed for taxpayer-funded college tuition for undocumented immigrants and previously opened his campaign office to support George Floyd protesters during the 2020 riots. Fateh returned thousands in campaign donations tied to the “Feeding Our Future” fraud scandal but has continued to draw scrutiny for his associations.
Read the full article here