The first Democratic Farmer-Labor Party endorsement of a Minneapolis mayoral candidate in 16 years came clouded with controversy.
State Senator Omar Fateh won the endorsement Saturday after a last-minute vote decided by a show of hands after many delegates from incumbent Jacob Frey had exited the convention.
On Monday, Frey filed a formal challenge of the endorsement process to the state DFL.
“DFL leaders, delegates, and voters across our city and party are filing challenges to ensure that the inaccurate balloting of the convention does not create a permanent rift in our party,” Frey’s campaign manager, Sam Schulenberg, said in a prepared statement. “In an overwhelmingly Democratic city like Minneapolis, there is no reason to push through a DFL endorsement using a highly flawed process that clearly missed or did not count a large percentage of the votes cast.”
A spokesperson with the state DFL Party declined to comment on the matter Monday, stating that the party must stay impartial through the process, as it “may need to ultimately adjudicate challenges that have emerged from the Minneapolis DFL’s city convention.”
Officials with the Minneapolis DFL Party could not immediately be reached Monday, although the party’s website prominently touts Omar’s endorsement next to his picture.
Omar and his campaign did not return requests for comment Monday. Omar has represented part of south Minneapolis in the Legislature for four years. Frey is running for his third term as mayor.
Controversial convention
The first round of voting, which was done online with delegates pointing their phones at a QR code on the jumbotron at Target Center, took more than two hours to tabulate. When that tabulation was finally completed, 577 votes were counted. There were a total of approximately 1,000 delegates, 750 of whom were eligible to participate in the convention’s first vote, according to Frey’s campaign.
Many criticized the process on social media as it was happening.
Frey’s challenge is based on the “extraordinarily high number of missing or uncounted votes produced by the highly flawed and untested electronic voting system used in the balloting” during the first vote, according to his campaign.
The first round balloting saw Omar lead with 44 percent of the vote and Frey trailed with 35 percent; 60 percent is required to secure the endorsement. Other mayoral candidates represented at the convention include DeWayne Davis, Jazz Hampton and Brenda Short.
DFL organizers then said second round votes would be conducted via paper and not electronically. That plan, however, never happened.
At some point in the night, Frey’s campaign reportedly texted its delegates to leave the convention. The statement his campaign circulated Monday about its appeal did not address the text message.
“It’s clear this convention is over and not representative,” read a text message reportedly sent by Frey’s campaign. Images of the text circulated widely online on X and Bluesky.
If the text was an attempt to remove enough delegates to prevent there from being a quorum in order to stop an endorsement vote, it backfired, said Hamline University political science professor David Schultz.
“It’s not unusual to do something like that,” Schultz said. “But when you do that, you want to make sure that you’re going to be effective.”
But a Frey campaign spokesperson said the request to withdraw delegates was not an attempt to kill quorum, but instead came after several delegates had already left over concerns about the first ballot tally and the process.
With less than an hour to go before people had to leave Target Center at 10 p.m., DFL organizers held an endorsement vote by a show of hands holding up their delegate badges. The vast majority of Frey’s delegates had left by then, leaving mostly Omar supporters present. Omar won the vote and endorsement handily. The vote count was not tabulated.
Frey’s first statement after the convention suggested his campaign may put most of its focus on the coming general election in November.
“This election should be by our entire city, not by a handful of delegates,” Frey wrote on X Saturday night less than two hours after the convention ended. “I look forward to a full debate with Sen. Fateh about our records and visions for our Minneapolis’s future. Onward to November!”
If a candidate chooses to challenge the outcome of an endorsement, they shoulder the burden of proving any potential wrongdoing.
One possible argument is that not enough delegates were present during the final vote to make a quorum, according to several social media posts. DFL activists on social media denounced that argument following the convention, pointing out that an endorsement vote for the Minneapolis park board that came after Omar’s endorsement showed that 478 delegates were present for a quorum.
Frey’s challenge is likely an uphill battle.
“I would be surprised if they overturned it,” Schultz said of the state DFL Party. “That would be a significant second-guessing of what’s happening at the convention.”
Omar endorsement could signal new phase in Minneapolis politics
Omar is the first Somali American to carry the DFL endorsement for mayor of Minnesota’s largest city. If elected, he would be the first Somali American to serve in the office, and the first socialist in the post in more than a century.
“This endorsement is a message that Minneapolis residents are done with broken promises, vetoes, and politics as usual,” Omar wrote on X following the endorsement. “It’s a mandate to build a city that works for all of us.”
That Omar was able to break a long precedent of no endorsements for Minneapolis mayor is also telling, Schultz said, noting that the last time the party was united behind a candidate for that office was in 2009 with R.T. Rybak.
“Since then the [Minneapolis DFL] has been splitting further and further apart,” Schultz said. “It symbolizes that perhaps the progressive wing is successful in taking over the party.”
The endorsement is a boon for Omar because it gives him the DFL voter rolls and allows the DFL to spend its own money on his candidacy.
“He basically gets the full spectrum of whatever resources the party has at this point, which could be pretty significant,” Schultz said.
Frey, however, has won two mayoral elections before without the party endorsement and has a “pretty strong base” of voters in the city and an advantage as the incumbent, Schultz added.
At least one of the other mayoral candidates will remain in the race this fall. The election will be held using ranked choice voting, allowing voters to rank multiple candidates by descending preference.
“I intend to stay in the race,” said Jazz Hampton, a local civil rights attorney. “The city needs to have the opportunity to fully rank ballots in November, and in order to do that, we have to have multiple candidates there to give them the opportunity to do so.”
Davis, a pastor who is also running for mayor, said he would provide an update on his campaign on Tuesday. During the convention, he told delegates and attendees that he would not abide by the party endorsement and would not drop out of the race if he wasn’t nominated.
With a Somali American at the top of the city ticket for the first time, the race could symbolize a growth of ethnic politics in Minneapolis, Schultz said. Political coalitions built on different ethnic groups have always been a mainstay in cities like New York and Chicago, he said, but have not established themselves to the same degree in Minneapolis.
