Establishment Democrats win in Minneapolis

In the heartland of America, an inflection point has come to pass. Minneapolis was once immortalized in the 1970s television series The Mary Tyler Moore Show, when Mary Richards made her bright-eyed and optimistic journey there in search of opportunity and a new life. But now it is a relic; worn away, gritty and unwelcoming – with more empty storefronts than warm smiles. Of course, the decay didn’t happen overnight.

The failed policies of a series of Democratic leaders and a progressive city council have left the biggest city in the Minnesota Nice State a shadow of its former self. Minneapolis has had a Democrat mayor (Democrat-Farmer-Labor in this neck of the woods) every term since 1976 and hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Richard Erdall served one day on December 31, 1973. Out of the 15 candidates who ran for mayor this year, there were no Republicans.

This Election Day the choice was between the current mayor, Jacob Frey, who oversaw the disastrous “Summer of Love” 2020 riots in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, from which the city is still reeling, and Omar Fateh, the Ilhan Omar and Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed state senator who won reelection in 2022 and touts his work there as “transformative policy.” 

Ultimately, Jacob Frey won his third mayoral term with 50.03 percent of the vote after the second round of ranked-choice voting (no candidate received more than 50 percent in the first round) was counted on Tuesday. But the contest was fraught. 

Fateh’s state’s legislative session in 2023 was controversial and included a massive new state-run paid family leave program, free school breakfast and lunch for all K-12 students, regardless of family income, free college tuition and healthcare for illegal immigrants, free housing and free menstrual products in all school bathrooms, including boys. All this spending blew away previous state budget records, with the omnibus bill increasing spending by 40 percent – from $51.6 billion to $71.5 billion over two years. 

For his part, Frey has tried to hold together a city at odds with itself – consistent with the divisions within the Democratic Party, not just in the city or the state, but the country at large, most notably in New York City. The battle is between radical-left progressives – who want males to participate in female sports and gender-affirming surgery for minors – and moderate Democrats who reject much of the woke ideology, language and radical policies that have run the political and cultural conversations of the last five years (think “defund the police” and not knowing what a woman is).

Frey branded himself as a “pragmatic progressive.” Considering the state of Minneapolis politics, this means he sounds more like an establishment Democrat; supportive of law and order, public safety, affordable housing (while addressing the city’s persistent homelessness problem) and green energy policies. He won the endorsements of U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Andrew Luger and two previous Minneapolis chiefs of police. 

Fateh is one of a rising group of Democratic-Socialists running for office across the country this election cycle – not only against their immediate opponents, like Frey in Minneapolis, but against the party establishment and gatekeepers who they see as hindrances to their turn at power, all with a raised fist that combines elements of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, BDS and antisemitism.

From the outside, it looked like a left versus further-left fight. Still, one issue has really rubbed Minneapolitans the wrong way: a guaranteed minimum wage and worker protection for rideshare drivers like Uber and Lyft, which Fateh championed in the state senate. The effects have increased the cost of rideshare and delivery services in a city where “affordability” is a buzzword.

Further, the city was ground zero for the 2020 costly and deadly race riots in a state that might be the most corrupt in the nation, with $1 billion stolen from government coffers in fraud schemes, all with ties to the immigrant Somali community, including Fateh.

It turns out that Minneapolis had more pragmatic Democrats, Independents and Republicans, who held their nose to vote for Frey, than New York City did in voting for Mayor Mamdani. 

And, zooming out from the mayoral race, the Minneapolis City Council appears to have leaned away from its previous progressive bloc and will no longer have a veto-proof majority. Frey’s “pragmatic” approach appealed to right-of-socialist voters and motivated them to turn out as well. 

Taken together, voters in Minneapolis decided to keep limping along with the devil they know rather than to go all-in with a mayoral candidate who could put the final nail in the city’s coffin. Minneapolis might not make Mary Richards smile, but she might just make it after all.