The Minnesota affiliate of the Democratic Party rescinded its endorsement on Thursday of an anti-Israel candidate in the Minneapolis mayoral race over voting irregularities at its nominating convention in July.
The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s Constitution, Bylaws and Rules Committee determined that the vote to endorse state senator Omar Fateh was invalid and barred its Minneapolis branch from holding a second nominating convention.
“The Constitution, Bylaws and Rules Committee found substantial failures in the Minneapolis convention’s voting process on July 19, including an acknowledgement that a mayoral candidate was errantly eliminated from contention,” DFL Party chairman Richard Carlbom stated. “As a result, the Constitution, Bylaws & Rules Committee has vacated the mayoral endorsement.”
The committee’s report describes a chaotic convention process involving a lost credentials book for an entire city ward, a chief vote counter suffering from a debilitating migraine headache and a late-night rules suspension that allowed Fateh to be nominated by a show of badges.
Fateh is a self-described democratic socialist and the U.S.-born son of Somali immigrants campaigning to unseat Democratic incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey, who has stayed in the race despite losing the DFL endorsement.
Fateh, who is running to Frey’s left and has drawn comparisons to New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as a young Muslim socialist challenging an incumbent from his own party, is also staunchly opposed to Israel.
In a Democratic Socialists of America questionnaire from February, he pledged to support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and to refrain from “any and all affiliation with the Israeli government or Zionist lobby groups,” including AIPAC, Christians United for Israel, J Street, Democratic Majority for Israel and the Jewish Community Relations Council.
“With deep remorse for the actions of our country’s federal government, which shows no signs of wavering in its commitment to unconditional military and political support for Israel’s genocide in Palestine, announcing that I will be voting uncommitted on Super Tuesday,” Fateh wrote ahead of the 2024 Democratic primary.
His campaign also includes staffers who have posted on social media about supporting the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
‘The root of the problem’
David Gilbert-Pederson, who is listed as a Fateh staff member in his campaign financial filings, said in a December 2023 panel discussion about Oct. 7 and Israel that “all resistance to that kind of imperial domination is justified.”
“Unconditional solidarity does not mean that we get to say, ‘Oh, this tactic you did, we don’t really like that’ or ‘We agree with you, but I think that some of your methods are too extreme,’” Gilbert-Pederson said in remarks first reported by Jewish Insider. “That’s not what unconditional solidarity means.”
Fateh’s communications manager, Anya Smith-Kooiman, wrote in a now-deleted social-media post in 2024 that Israel “does not have a ‘right’ to exist.” One month after the Oct. 7 massacre, she claimed that “the root of the problem is a colonial government segregating, ethnically cleansing, murdering Palestinians, stealing their land with impunity and not expecting a resistance group to violently fight back.”
After his endorsement was revoked, Fateh accused Frey and his supporters of unfairly influencing the DFL rules committee.
“This is exactly what Minneapolis voters are sick of—the insider games, the backroom decisions and feeling like our voice doesn’t matter in our own city,” Fateh said on Thursday in a video message. “Frey’s team used every tactic they could, including delay and confusion on convention day because they didn’t have the votes.”
Frey welcomed the decision.
“I’m proud to be a member of a party that believes in correcting our mistakes, and I’m glad that this inaccurate and obviously flawed process was set aside,” the mayor wrote.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who represents parts of Minneapolis, said on Thursday that the revocation of Fateh’s endorsement was “unacceptable.”
“It is inexcusable to overturn the DFL endorsement from Omar Fateh,” she wrote. “A small group, a majority living outside Minneapolis, met privately to overturn the will of Minneapolis delegates who volunteered, organized and participated in a months-long DFL process.”
