Analysis: Minneapolis chooses between two futures — and tests the power of immigrant politics
On Tuesday, Minneapolis will do something this city has grown used to since 2020: step into a voting booth and decide what kind of place it wants to be. The mayoral race is crowded, consequential and deeply symbolic. It offers a generational choice between two well-known figures — Jacob Frey, a centrist incumbent who has governed through the hardest chapters in modern city history, and Omar Fateh, a Somali-American state senator promising a reset on affordability and public safety. It is also a test of whether one of America’s most visible immigrant communities can carry a candidate to City Hall in a major U.S. city.
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A city still negotiating with itself
Minneapolis has been negotiating with itself for four years — over how to police, how to house, how to grow. Since George Floyd’s murder, the city has cycled through bursts of reform and retrenchment. Two outside investigations — from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights — found patterns of racial bias and excessive force, and their findings now anchor court-enforceable changes to training, oversight and accountability. Whoever wins Tuesday will be responsible for seeing those reforms through, line by line.
Frey, 44, has staked his re-election on continuity: shootings are down from the peak years, downtown has flickered back to life, and sworn officers have climbed from roughly 550 to about 620. “Safety and reform are not mutually exclusive,” he’s said often. The mayor’s support includes Governor Tim Walz and a roster of business-aligned political groups that argue steady hands make steady cities.
Fateh, 35, is running on a different clock. He talks about the cost of living as a public safety issue—rent stabilization, more affordable units, and a $20 citywide minimum wage by 2028. On policing, he favors redirecting nonviolent calls to mental health and community responders and balancing law enforcement budgets with investments in youth programs, housing and crisis response. “We need a public safety model that meets people where they are, not one that over-polices poverty,” he said at a recent debate. “When we invest in housing and wages, we invest in safety.”
Inside the Democratic family fight
One reason the race feels bigger than city limits is that Minneapolis is staging a familiar argument within the Democratic Party in fast-forward. Fateh captured more than 60 percent of delegate votes to win the local Democratic–Farmer–Labor endorsement in July — only to see it revoked weeks later over technical problems that party leaders say produced an incomplete electronic tally. Fateh’s supporters cried foul, calling the reversal an establishment rescue for Frey. The party’s procedural snag hardened into a narrative: donors versus door-knockers, insiders versus organizers.
That story has been playing out from Boston to Los Angeles in recent years. Cities that lean blue now contain multitudes, and the disputes are often less about whether to pursue change than how quickly and where to place the bets. Minneapolis, which pioneered ranked-choice voting more than a decade ago, will resolve that question one preference at a time.
Ranked-choice and the progressive experiment
Fifteen names will be on the ballot. Voters can mark up to three in order. If no one clears 50 percent in the first round, the last-place candidates are eliminated and their voters’ next choices are redistributed — a process that can stretch into Wednesday or Thursday. The system forces coalition-building and, at its best, makes campaigns talk to people who might otherwise be dismissed as second choices.
Progressives have tried to use the rules to their advantage. Fateh is running in a “Slate for Change” with fellow candidates Jazz Hampton and DeWayne Davis, urging their supporters to rank the trio ahead of the incumbent. That approach pays off if their voters overlap and if enough of the city’s young, renter-heavy, and union households turn out. As of Monday, more than 23,000 ballots had already been cast — the second-highest early turnout in Minneapolis history — a sign that interest is intense even in an off-year.
A milestone within reach — and the weight that comes with it
Fateh’s path runs through a community that has already changed Minnesota’s political map. Somali Minnesotans — estimated in the tens of thousands statewide — have moved from refugee apartments into school boards, council chambers and Congress. Ilhan Omar, who represents Minneapolis in the U.S. House, backs Fateh. In 2023, Nadia Mohamed became mayor of St. Louis Park. Deqa Dhalac won in South Portland, Maine, two years earlier. But none of these posts carries the national wattage of running a city the size of Minneapolis.
At Cedar-Riverside — where mosques sit minutes from microbreweries and fresh injera stacks beside food co-ops — voters describe this race as both pragmatic and personal. During the final weekend, Fateh moved from the 24 Somali Mall to the Mill City Farmers Market, bridging constituencies that don’t often share political space. “This election is about visibility,” said Abdirahman Warsame, a community volunteer in Cedar-Riverside. “For many of us, seeing a Somali name on the ballot for mayor means our voice finally matters.”
That visibility has a cost. Fateh’s campaign has reported Islamophobic threats, including graffiti at his headquarters and online death threats now under investigation. The harassment echoes an old American pattern: newcomers often face the sharpest version of the debate about who belongs, especially when they seek power. It also connects Minneapolis to a wider global conversation about Muslim politicians in Western democracies, from Sadiq Khan in London to rising figures in continental Europe. Representation can open doors; it can also attract backlash.
The global stakes of a local vote
For a city that became the epicenter of a global racial justice movement, the question on Tuesday is not whether to change but what kind of change feels livable. Can Minneapolis satisfy federal oversight while maintaining officer morale? Can it build housing fast enough to keep families from being priced out? Can it channel the idealism of 2020 into durable policy rather than permanent polarization?
Other cities will be watching, and not just because Fateh has been dubbed the “Mamdani of the Midwest,” a nod to the democratic socialist legislator in New York whose own mayoral ambitions have drawn headlines. Minneapolis has often served as a policy lab: it was early to adopt ranked-choice voting, quick to debate transforming public safety, and is now among the cities implementing sweeping police reforms under a court’s eye. What happens here can travel.
That’s why the choice between Fateh and Frey reads like a choice between tempos. Frey is offering a steadier beat: incremental reforms, more officers, downtown revival, new housing units. Fateh is offering a faster rhythm: wage hikes, rent rules, and a shift in who shows up when you call for help. Neither path is simple. Both will be constrained by judges, consent decrees and budgets. Both will be tested by the unpredictable crises that make or break mayors — a winter storm that overwhelms shelters, a high-profile police stop, a shooting that reignites old wounds.
For voters, the question is simple only at the booth. After years of grief and argument, what kind of city feels most honest to who Minneapolis is now — and who it wants to become? The answer will take more than one round to tally. The work will take much longer.
Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. local time. Results may not be final until later in the week. For a city used to being watched, patience is part of the job.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
