Minnesota Democrats Revoke Mayoral Endorsement for Self-Proclaimed Socialist Omar Fateh

Minnesota's Democratic Party revoked its endorsement of self-proclaimed socialist Omar Fateh, a Minneapolis mayoral candidate and state senator, weeks after handing Fateh the endorsement over incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey.

The Minneapolis Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party decided to revoke the democratic socialist's endorsement over concerns about errors in the endorsing convention. The party announced on Sunday that it failed to count all delegate votes at the meeting in which Fateh was endorsed, and nearly 100 individuals, including Frey, have challenged the vote.

Minnesota's Star Tribune first reported the decision, which the outlet said will be released publicly on Friday.

Fateh mounted a challenge to Frey in November 2024, and secured DFL's endorsement in a surprise triumph in July. The DFL offers a substantial amount of resources to endorsed candidates, including a wide voter database, and Fateh was the first mayoral candidate the DFL has endorsed in 16 years.

Although Fateh received 328 votes and Frey 227 votes, a review found that 176 votes were not counted due to an electronic voting system failure. Fateh won by a show-of-hands vote.

"What should've been an orderly, fair and transparent endorsement process instead became a textbook example of systematic dysfunction. One that disenfranchised members of our party, broke our own rules, and undermined trust both inside and outside the convention hall," said one challenger, former DFL chair Mike Erlandson.

"According to the Minneapolis DFL's respondents own brief, 176 votes were incorrectly not counted. If they had been, a third candidate, DeWayne Davis, would've been eligible for the second mayoral ballot. Because these errors were never corrected, everything that followed was likewise flawed," Erlandson added.

Some DFL officials disagree that the outcome would have changed if the votes were counted.

"To say a violation has occurred is not enough to overturn an endorsement. To overturn an endorsement requires clear and convincing evidence that the violation was so significant that it would have materially changed the outcome," co-chair of the Minneapolis DFL City Convention Dan Thomas-Commins said last week.

Fateh has been compared to New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as an equally anti-Israel, far-left socialist. The Minnesota Senate's first Somali and Muslim member, Fateh promised to raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour, ban new charter schools, and push to implement an income tax if elected mayor.

His endorsement was "a message that Minneapolis residents are done with broken promises, vetoes, and politics as usual," Fateh said at the time.

"Our campaign sees this for what it is: disenfranchisement of thousands of Minneapolis caucus-goers and the delegates who represented all of us on convention day," Fateh's co-campaign manager Graham Faulkner said Thursday. "The establishment is threatened by our message. They are scared of a politics that really stands up to corporate interests and with our working class neighbors."