After a couple of nail-biting hours Wednesday morning of ranked-choice voter counts for mayor of Minneapolis, incumbent Jacob Frey was declared the winner.
The win sets him on course to govern alongside a City Council that maintained its progressive majority, albeit slightly weakened with key wins for moderates Pearll Warren in Ward 5 and Elizabeth Shaffer in Ward 7. Warren fills a vacancy left by progressive Jeremiah Ellison, while Shaffer defeated incumbent Katie Cashman. In Ward 8, Soren Stevenson, endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, earned the seat left vacant by the more moderate Andrea Jenkins.
Steve Cramer, a Frey supporter who sat on the Minneapolis City Council from 1984-1993 and later served as CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, said an incrementally more moderate council would likely work better with Frey in his valedictory term if they and the council’s remaining progressives can find common ground. Frey-aligned Jamison Whiting, who won the Ward 11 seat vacated by Emily Koski, could act as an important “bridge vote,” Cramer said.
“We have an incentive to get our act together,” Cramer said. “The relative strength [of the progressives] is more balanced, but whether the council and mayor can overcome their divisions remains to be seen.”
After tabulating the first round of votes on Tuesday night, Frey led with with 42% of votes, followed by State Sen. Omar Fateh with 32%, Dwayne Davis with 14% and Jazz Hampton trailing with 10%. Davis and Hampton (and a long list of non-contenders) were eliminated from the ranked-choice set-up, having no chance to secure enough votes to win. That left the widely anticipated match-up between Frey’s promise of stable but steady progress and Fateh’s call for deeper change.
Credit: MinnPost photo by Craig Lassig
As the initial results rolled in on Tuesday night, cheers of “Jacob! Jacob! Jacob!” went up from the boisterous, standing-room crowd assembled at Jefe Urban Cocina in St. Anthony Main.
“This city showed up once again. … We got what appears to be near record turnout,” Frey told his supporters shortly before 10:30 p.m. “I’ll tell you what: It looks damn good for us. We are well in the lead.”
In unofficial results reported on the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office website as of 10 p.m. Tuesday, 145,451 Minneapolis voters cast ballots in the mayor’s race. One of 137 precincts had yet to be reported. The city’s previous turnout record was set in 2021, when 145,337 residents cast ballots and elected Frey to a second term.
Frey’s main challengers ran more or less as a slate opposed to his leadership — a move Cramer said may prove to have backfired. Some voters likely ranked Frey alongside one or more of the challengers, diluting the anti-Frey vote.
“Maybe the strategy was too cute by half,” Cramer said.
Across the river at downtown Minneapolis’ Courtyard by Marriott, Fateh kept his comments brief Tuesday night in the wake of the results. “We’ve waited eight years. We can wait for one more day.”
“Please stay patient,” Fateh told a boisterous crowd of supporters, many of them young and many of them immigrants. “We stay proud because this campaign has already changed the conversation for what Minneapolis can be.”
Ranked-choice voting in Minneapolis
In 2017, mayoral candidates faced off in five rounds of vote counts before Frey reached 50% of the ranked-choice vote.
Despite Frey’s solid showing in the first round on Tuesday, groups supportive of the challengers’ slate said the results showed Minneapolis was ready to turn the page on a tense two years in city government.
“We believe the high turnout we’re seeing around the city can be attributed to voters who are demanding new leadership in the mayor’s office,” said Chelsea McFarren, chair of the progressive Minneapolis for the Many political action committee.
PACs aligned with Frey outraised Minneapolis for the Many and allied groups by more than two to one, yet failed to unseat leading council progressives like Robin Wonsley and Aisha Chughtai. In Ward 8, progressive Soren Stevenson handily defeated Josh Bassais to replace outgoing Jenkins, a Frey ally.
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Watch party hopefuls monitor mayoral race
Earlier Tuesday evening, supporters showed up to watch parties around the city, hoping for decisive wins.
In the ballroom at the Courtyard by Marriott, Fateh supporters danced to a raucous grab-bag of classic Afrobeat and 21st century pop songs, as well as the requisite “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince.
They chattered about Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York City, hoping it signaled a strong showing for Fateh, called by some the “Mamdani of the Midwest.”
Related: To win in Minneapolis, mayoral candidates tout their influence outside of it
Abdel Hassan, who said he just returned from a visit to his native Somalia, said it would be important to have both a Somali and Muslim in a seat of power, and that Fateh’s young supporters could inspire a new generation of politically active Somalis.
Several attendees said they backed Fateh for his support of housing policies like rent control, but also because at least symbolically he represents a voice for Palestine. Cisiyne Sh Eahir said that he was open to a Frey mayoralship until Frey vetoed a City Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas.
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At Moxy hotel in Uptown, Jackson Hampton showed up to support Lydia Millard, who lost a hotly contested race against incumbent Aisha Chughtai, the progressive council vice president.
“I don’t want to see anybody fail because that means the city’s failed,” Hampton said. Contemplating the possibility of a Millard loss, Hampton said he’d stay engaged “and make sure that Minneapolis has the best chance of success for the future.”
Millard’s campaign manager Nico Woods said the ideological diversity in the ward proved more challenging than during past campaigns he worked on. “You have some that [are] socialist, you have leftists, you have moderates. The majority are Democrats, but they just have different points of view about what they feel is important.”
When results came in, Woods said, “No matter what, a community was built here.”
The reallocation of votes in Minneapolis began on Wednesday morning. Frey was declared the winner around 11:30 a.m., about 11 hours after neighboring Ramsey County’s hastier reallocation work resulting in a victory for Kaohly Her over incumbent Mayor Melvin Carter.
The post Frey secures a third term as Minneapolis mayor, defeating democratic socialist Omar Fateh appeared first on MinnPost.
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