Minneapolis has become the next major American city facing down the prospect of an openly socialist mayor as state Senator Omar Fateh looks to match Zohran Mamdani’s far-left extremism.
Like Mamdani, Fateh has risen from relative obscurity to become the talk of the political world in a matter of weeks. His campaign received another boost on Monday when the Minneapolis Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party endorsed him over incumbent Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey. That stunning and highly unusual move comes as a particular shock given that just a few years ago, Frey was heralded as a progressive hero for his embrace of the Defund the Police and Black Lives Matter movements.
The 35-year-old Fateh is the son of Somali immigrants and the first Muslim to serve in the Minnesota Senate. Although he announced his bid to unseat Frey in December, his campaign began gaining more attention following the rise of fellow self-described “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani in New York City.
Fateh’s platform is in some respects even more radical than Mamdani’s. He has promised to implement widespread rent control, raise the minimum wage to $20, ban the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, and “divert” up to half of all 911 calls to social workers.
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