Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey leads challenger Omar Fateh as crowded race moves to 2nd round tally

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minneapolis Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey led challenger Omar Fateh as the 15-candidate race moved to a second round of counting set for Wednesday after no candidate secured an outright majority.

The election Tuesday between Frey, a mainstream Democrat seeking a third term, and Fateh, a state senator who is a democratic socialist, highlighted different visions of how to govern in a liberal city confronting persistent problems with policing, crime and homelessness.

Ranked-choice voting requires a 2nd round of counting

The way ranked-choice voting works in Minneapolis, if no candidate clears the 50%-plus-one vote threshold in the first round, candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated for the next round of counting, while second- and third-choice rankings are allocated to the surviving candidates. The process is repeated until one candidate has enough. Frey won after the second round in 2021.

“Nobody’s declaring victory tonight,” Frey told supporters. “But what I will tell you is, we are well in the lead, and we are well on the way. And we are super excited about where this city is going.”

“So tonight, this race is too close to call,” Fateh said at a separate gathering. “And that’s OK because every vote must be counted and reallocated.”

The challengers

Fateh hopes to become the city’s first Muslim and Somali American mayor. He has drawn comparisons with Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who won New York City’s mayoral race on Tuesday, because of their backgrounds and ideological similarities. Both come from immigrant families, although Fateh, a member of the city’s large Somali American community, was born in the U.S.

While there are 15 candidates on the ballot, the only others who raised significant sums were the Rev. DeWayne Davis and businessman Jazz Hampton, who are seen as left of Frey but right of Fateh.

Based on unofficial but nearly complete results, Frey led Fateh by about 10 percentage points with Davis and Hampton further back, making the final outcome hard to predict. Fateh, Davis and Hampton formed an alliance, urging their voters to rank one another, but not Frey, to make it harder for the incumbent to win.

Frey and Fateh offer contrasting records

Frey led Minneapolis through the turmoil and came under heavy criticism following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white officer used his knee to pin his neck to the pavement for 9 1/2 minutes. But his administration later negotiated agreements with the state and federal governments to remake a police department that lost hundreds of officers after Floyd’s death.

Fateh has backed off his early support for the “defund the police” movement, but he supported a ballot measure opposed by Frey and rejected by voters in 2021 that would have reimagined public safety in the city. Fateh continues to stress the need for alternatives to conventional policing. Frey says the city is already implementing them.

The ideological divisions also show up in the two candidates’ approaches to housing and other issues. Frey opposes rent control; Fateh says he advocates some form of rent stabilization without being specific. Fateh is critical of how the Frey administration has moved to shut down homeless camps.

Fateh has long championed the cause of Uber and Lyft drivers at the Legislature. Frey vetoed an attempt by the City Council to raise their wages after the companies threatened to pull out of the city. Fateh later used his leverage to force a compromise at the state level.

Fateh, like Mamdani in New York, is a strong opponent of how Israel conducted the war in Gaza. Frey, who is Jewish, vetoed a City Council ceasefire resolution that he considered one-sided.

All the leading candidates have vowed to stand firm against President Donald Trump and to resist his efforts to undermine Minneapolis’ status as a sanctuary city for immigrants — or any effort Trump might make to send federal troops into the city.

Special elections maintain Democratic control of state Senate

A pair of special elections to fill vacant seats in the Minnesota Senate preserved the Democrats’ one-vote, 34-33 majority in the chamber.

Democratic state Rep. Amanda Hemmingsen-Jaeger defeated GOP candidate Dwight Dorau in District 47, which includes parts of the eastern suburbs of Maplewood and Woodbury. The seat became vacant when its former senator, Democrat Nicole Mitchell, resigned after she was convicted of burglary for breaking into her estranged stepmother’s home.

But Republican Michael Holmstrom Jr. defeated Democrat Louis McNutt to win the special election in District 29, which includes the western exurb of Buffalo. That seat became open when Sen. Bruce Anderson died in July.

Steve Karnowski, The Associated Press