The campaign office of Minneapolis mayoral candidate, DFL state Sen. Omar Fateh, was vandalized earlier this week with an Islamaphobic message that prompted the campaign to file a police report.
The message written on an office window read, “Somali Muslim — This warning is no joke,” according to a news release from the Fateh campaign. The campaign filed a report with Minneapolis police on Wednesday.
“Our campaign will not be deterred by hate speech and vandalism. We will not back down to islamophobia. I will not be bullied or intimidated. The people of Minneapolis are demanding change, and I will continue fighting for it,” Fateh said in a written statement.
The campaign wrote that Fateh has received a “steady stream of hate, racial, and Islamophobic slurs, and violent threats to the campaign email, his senate email, and across social media,” and noted that the state lawmaker has also appeared on a hit list allegedly made by Vance Boelter, the man indicted for the June murders of Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, and her husband Mark Hortman. He is also charged with shooting and wounding DFL state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman.
“I spoke with Senator Fateh yesterday and made it clear that my office, MPD [Minneapolis Police Department], and our administration all stand ready to help,” Frey said in a statement reported by KSTP. “City staff went out this morning to scrub the vandalism from the building. Acts of Islamophobia and hate against any religion or ethnicity have no place in Minneapolis.”
A Minneapolis Police Department spokesperson confirmed Thursday that the department is investigating the report and has referred the incident to its behavioral threat assessment team. The spokesperson also confirmed that this is not the first time the department has handled threats against Fateh.
This particular threat, however, comes as Minnesota and the nation as a whole reels from a chilling uptick in political violence in recent months.
The killing of the Hortmans and the shooting of Hoffman and his wife, in particular, rocked Minnesota. Boetler’s hit list also reportedly included the names of more than 40 prominent Democrats, including Rep. Ilhan Omar and Attorney General Keith Ellison, as well as nonprofit leaders like executives at Planned Parenthood.
Those shootings preceded the assassination of right-wing political activist and commentator Charlie Kirk in Utah earlier this month, which was followed by promises by top advisors to President Donald Trump to crackdown on left-wing political organizations and activism.
Political violence on the whole is rising in the U.S. and has been for several years, with attacks or planned attacks targeting high-profile individuals such as Trump, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Meanwhile, Islamophobia is also on the rise. The Council on American-Islamic Relations received a record number of complaints of discrimination or attacks last year, a seven percent rise over the previous record set in 2023.
In a written statement, CAIR-MN executive director Jaylani Hussein condemned the “cowardly and hateful” vandalism and called on law enforcement to investigate the incident as a hate crime.
“This alleged threat is not just against one individual — it is an attack on Minnesota’s Somali, Muslim, and immigrant communities, and on our democratic process,” Hussein said. “In light of the recent assassination of Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, the failed assassination attempt against Senator Hoffman and his wife, and the most recent assassination of political figure Charlie Kirk, we must urge for increased vigilance.”
Fateh, a democratic socialist who is locked in a heated contest to unseat incumbent Frey in November, is a particularly high-profile public figure.
Should he win election, Fateh would be sworn in as the first Muslim and first Somali mayor of Minnesota’s largest city. He has faced attacks throughout his campaign from figures on the right, including Kirk, that he is not sufficiently American and that he is part of an attempted “Islamic takeover” of the country.
Fateh won the DFL endorsement in the mayoral race in July before the endorsement was revoked due to issues with the voting process. Recent polling has found Fateh trailing Frey, the two-term incumbent, albeit narrowly.
