JNS
The incumbent outperformed Omar Fateh, who has been harshly critical of Israel, by more than 10 points.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey led a field of 16 candidates in his bid to win a third term, but fell short of the majority he needed to win a third term on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the Associate Press called the race for the incumbent, with 99% of votes counted.
He had a 10-percentage-point lead on Tuesday night over Omar Fateh, a state senator who, like Frey, is a Democrat and emerged as the leading challenger to oust the two-term incumbent.
Frey, who is Jewish and has supported Israel, secured 61,340 votes (41.7%) in the end, some 10 points more than the anti-Israel state senator, who had 46,510 votes (31.6%).
Because no candidate garnered a majority of the vote on Election Night, the city has moved to ranked voting, in which voters list three candidates in order of preference. As candidates with the lowest number of votes are eliminated, their votes are reallocated based on a voter’s next choice until one candidate gets more than 50%.
“While this wasn’t the outcome we wanted, I am incredibly grateful to every single person who supported our grassroots campaign,” Fateh stated. “I’ll keep fighting alongside you to build the city we deserve. Onward.”
Fateh has accused Israel of “genocide” and called for an “immediate ceasefire” 10 days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack.
On Oct. 9, Frey, the incumbent mayor, stated that “the terroristic attacks perpetrated on innocent Israeli citizens by Hamas are abhorrent.”
“The more we find out, from senseless murders at a festival to children hostages taken, the more horrid it is,” he said. “On Simchat Torah, Israel should be at peace, not defending against attacks.”
The following day, on Oct. 10, 2023, he decried a post from a chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
“Appalling. This is erasure of innocent, murdered Israelis and the genocide against Jews for millennia,” he wrote. “Critique of Israel’s ruling coalition policies is fair game, but this attempt to ignore atrocities against Jews, days ago and historically, will let history repeat itself.”
The Democratic Socialists endorsed Fateh, as did Council on American-Islamic Relations and Jewish Voice for Peace, both of which have histories of anti-Israel statements. He has campaigned with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has also long made antisemitic comments.
Frey told Jewish Insider that he began embracing his Jewish identity to a greater extent after Oct. 7.
“My ethnicity has risen greatly over the last year in the way that I think of myself and how others think of me,” he told the publication. “There was a moment where I thought to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, there are all these people coming out against Jews, should I not be as out in front? Should I not be as vocal about my identity as a Jew?’ And as soon as I thought that, it was almost a slap in the face: ‘No, I have to be more out front. I have to be more vocal.’”
He has fought with members of the City Council, vetoing a resolution in December 2024 that supported students who occupied a building at the University of Minnesota to demand that the school divest from Israel. Frey called the protest “neither peaceful nor protected speech.”
He also vetoed a resolution in January 2024 calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas, saying the measure “uplifts the history of Palestinians, and all but erases that of Israeli Jews.”
Two of Fateh’s campaign aides appeared to have sided with Hamas after Oct. 7.
His communications manager, Anya Smith-Kooiman, said on social media that Israel “does not have a ‘right’ to exist” and “must be dismantled,” and said that verified reports of Hamas using sexual violence against women were “propaganda,” according to Jewish Insider.
She also blamed the Hamas attack on Israel.
“The root of the problem is a colonial government segregating, ethnically cleaning, murdering Palestinians, stealing their land with impunity and not expecting a resistance group to violently fight back,” she said
Another staff member, David Gilbert-Pederson, called for standing in “unconditional solidarity with those resisting oppression,” according to the publication.
He said that means supporting whatever tactics Hamas used.
“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,’” he said.
