CaliToday (06/11/2025): In what is being called one of the most significant municipal referendums in recent American history, Minneapolis the very city that became the global epicenter of the "Defund the Police" movement in 2020 has chosen a different path.
The re-election of moderate Mayor Jacob Frey to a third term is not just a local victory; it is a profound and telling political statement. By defeating Democratic Socialist (DSA) candidate Omar Fateh, the city's voters have seemingly decided that the reality of public safety and economic stability outweighs the promises of a far-left political revolution.
A Referendum on the Post-George Floyd Era
This election was never just about Frey versus Fateh. It was a battle for the soul of Minneapolis, fought in the long shadow of 2020.
Jacob Frey, 44, represented a path of "reform, not revolution." His political career was nearly destroyed in the fires of 2020 when he was publicly shamed and booed out of a protest for refusing to commit to abolishing the police. He ran this campaign on a promise to rebuild the depleted police force, restore public order, and focus on "pragmatic" economic recovery.
Omar Fateh, 34, represented the activist wing that was born from those protests. As a DSA member and state senator, his platform was a direct continuation of the 2020 movement: aggressive rent control, massive social welfare expansion, and a "reimagining" of policing that critics called a repackaged "defund" movement.
The result a 53% to 47% victory for Frey demonstrates a city that has stepped back from the brink of radicalism. The "loudest" voices from 2020, it appears, were not the majority.
How the Moderate Center Prevailed
Frey's win was secured by two key factors mentioned in the report:
The Mechanics of Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV): The RCV system was crucial. Frey led on the first-choice ballots with 45%, but not a majority. Fateh pulled in 30%. As the other 13 candidates were eliminated, their voters' second and third choices overwhelmingly flowed to Frey. This system, designed to find a consensus winner, successfully blocked a more "extreme" candidate from winning with a simple plurality. It proved that while voters were split, the "pragmatic center" was larger than the "socialist" base.
Fateh's Political Baggage: Fateh was not a clean candidate. He was hampered by pre-existing allegations of voter fraud, which, while he denied them, cost him the endorsement of his own state Democratic party (DFL). This allowed Frey to paint him not just as an idealist, but as a potentially flawed politician, making it easier for undecided moderates to back the incumbent.
A Tale of Two Cities: A National Split
Perhaps the most crucial takeaway is the stark contrast between this result and the election of Zohran Mamdani, a fellow DSA-backed socialist, as mayor of New York City in the very same news cycle.
This split perfectly illustrates the deep division in American urban politics.
New York City, arguably, chose to begin a radical political experiment.
Minneapolis—a city that has lived the real-world consequences of that experiment (including a depleted police force and a spike in violent crime post-2020) has decisively chosen to end it.
As one social media user aptly put it, "Minneapolis just sent a strong message to the nation: we want safety, not socialism." Frey's victory is a significant blow to the national DSA, which had hoped to claim the "ground zero" of the 2020 protests as its own.
Frey, who has confirmed this will be his final term, now has a clear mandate: stabilize the city, rebuild the relationship between the community and the police, and prove that his "boring" politics of pragmatism can deliver the results the revolution could not.
CaliToday.Net