MINNEAPOLIS — Mayor Jacob Frey defeated state Sen. Omar Fateh to win a third term in the city’s Nov. 4 municipal election after a bruising Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) endorsement battle split local Democrats and spilled into the fall campaign. Frey crossed the 50%-plus-one-vote threshold in the second round of ranked-choice tabulation, Nov. 5.
Frey finished with 73,723 votes (50.03%) to Fateh’s 65,377 (44.37%), according to the official election results posted by the city. In first-choice votes, Frey led Fateh, 61,444 to 46,614, in a 15-candidate field that also included the Rev. DeWayne Davis (20,414) and businessman Jazz Hampton (15,339).
Although the mayor’s contest is officially nonpartisan, the DFL endorsement has long mattered in Minneapolis politics because it can unlock money, volunteers and access to voter data. This year, the endorsement fight became a central storyline of the race and helped turn Election Day into a test of whether the city’s Democratic coalition would rally around the incumbent or embrace a leftward shift.
Omar Fateh, Jacob Frey and a DFL endorsement fight that didn’t settle the race
The drama began at the Minneapolis DFL endorsing convention July 19, when delegates backed Fateh over Frey after hours of delays and challenges. Frey’s campaign disputed the process and appealed to the state party.
Weeks later, the state DFL voided the local party’s endorsement after reviewing those challenges. In announcing the decision, DFL Chair Richard Carlbom said the party found “substantial failures” in the July 19 voting process, the CBS Minnesota report on the revocation said. CBS reported that investigators found nearly 200 votes missing and cited other problems, and that the Minneapolis DFL was placed on a two-year probation and barred from endorsing a mayoral candidate this year.
The move ensured the fall race would play out without an official DFL-endorsed candidate, even as both leading contenders ran as Democrats in a city dominated by the party. The state DFL also ruled that all mayoral candidates would get access to the party’s voter rolls—a resource typically reserved for the endorsed candidate—according to CBS.
Walz backs Frey as establishment Democrats pick sides
Gov. Tim Walz jumped into the dispute July 31, endorsing Frey even after Fateh had emerged from the endorsing convention with the local party’s backing. Walz said Frey “is a partner I can trust to actually deliver progressive policies that improve people’s lives,” according to FOX 9’s account of the endorsement.
The governor’s decision gave Frey a high-profile ally as Fateh’s campaign tried to frame the election as a break with “politics as usual” at City Hall. It also underscored the stakes of the intraparty fight: whether Minneapolis would put a democratic socialist in the mayor’s office in a city where Democrats hold most major levers of power.
A familiar Minneapolis ending: ranked-choice voting and a second-round victory
Minneapolis uses ranked-choice voting, which lets voters rank up to three candidates and triggers additional rounds of counting if no one clears a majority. Minnesota Public Radio’s ranked-choice voting explainer from 2021 noted the system is designed to produce a majority winner without a separate runoff election.
For Frey, the second-round finish was familiar. He also needed another round of tabulation to win reelection in 2021, as KSTP reported after that race.
In 2025, election officials said the city set a record for votes cast in a municipal election. After the final tally, Frey said the results showed “we have to love our city more than our ideology,” while Fateh said, “They may have won this race, but we have changed the narrative,” according to an Associated Press report on the final round. Fateh, Davis and Hampton had encouraged supporters to rank one another but not Frey—an unusual strategy in a ranked-choice race that ultimately fell short.
A longer arc inside the Minneapolis DFL
The party’s struggle to unify behind a mayoral contender is not new. In 2021, no candidate reached the 60% endorsement threshold after multiple rounds of convention counting—an episode Axios Twin Cities documented during that election cycle.
Fateh’s candidacy, meanwhile, reflected the growing political influence of younger progressives and immigrant communities in Minneapolis. He emerged during a period when Somali and other Black immigrant candidates were gaining power across Minnesota, a trend Sahan Journal chronicled in 2020 as the state’s electorate and leadership began to more closely match its cities.
Frey’s reelection secures another term but not necessarily a quieter City Hall. He will return to work with a City Council where progressives maintain a narrow majority, setting up fresh clashes over public safety, housing affordability and the pace of reform—even as Minneapolis Democrats continue to debate what the DFL label should represent in a changing city.
