Minneapolis reshaped the country for the worse in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and the birth of the “defund the police” movement. It appears the city is doing the same to the Democratic Party by leading its efforts to embrace socialism.
Jacob Frey was in his third year as mayor of Minneapolis when Floyd was killed by a police officer. By all accounts, the former Minneapolis City Councilman was a boring, generic Democrat. But Floyd’s death put the city, and Frey, into the spotlight, and he found himself having to win the approval of rabid left-wing activists.
Frey tried to do exactly that. He attended Floyd’s funeral and made sure to leave it with a photo of him sobbing while kneeling before Floyd’s coffin. He turned his focus to “institutional racism.” When Black Lives Matter rioters began burning down the city, which resulted in 1,500 businesses being damaged to the tune of $500 million, Frey claimed that out-of-state agitators were responsible. But records showed that most of those arrested were from Minnesota.
Frey also refused to call for the abolition of the Minneapolis Police Department, which led to him being heckled outside his own home by a crowd of protesters, even as he promised reforms.
Frey soon learned that his party feels the same way as those protesters. The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which is Minnesota’s Democratic Party, decided in July to hand out an endorsement in the Minneapolis mayoral race for the first time in 16 years. The endorsement was not for Frey, the twice-elected incumbent, but for Omar Fateh, who has served as a state senator since 2021.
Fateh supported the 2021 ballot measure to abolish the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a “Department of Public Safety.” Fateh is a self-professed socialist, endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America. Fateh is touting his DSA credentials while also claiming he does not support the DSA position of abolishing the police (the same rhetorical walk back that Zohran Mamdani is going through in New York City).
That ballot measure failed in 2021 by a vote of 56%-44%. It is entirely possible that Fateh’s candidacy fails as well if voter sentiment is not where the Minnesota DFL is. But there is no denying that the Minnesota Democratic apparatus is backing the socialist, including the state party, five of the 13 city council members (including the council’s president and vice president), and several of Fateh’s colleagues in the state legislature. Even if voters don’t end up going in that direction, Minnesota and Minneapolis Democrats have made it clear that they are all in favor of a new socialist direction.
This story didn’t start with Jacob Frey, nor does it end with Omar Fateh. Robin Wonsley sits on the city council as an independent socialist, and multiple DFL members of the council have DSA ties. That includes Aisha Chugtai, who previously served as Rep. Ilhan Omar’s campaign manager.
Omar is another key part of this Minneapolis socialist craze. She took office in 2019, and her congressional district includes parts of Minneapolis. She has become a close ally of the most prominent socialists in Congress, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Sanders even campaigned for Omar in her primary race last year against a former Minneapolis City Councilman who nearly defeated her in 2022. With Sanders’s help, Omar cruised to a double-digit victory.
Omar was the driving force behind the “defund the police” movement, and she supported eliminating the Minneapolis Police Department in the 2021 ballot measure. Omar represents every grotesque aspect of Minneapolis’s rising socialism, from the anti-police sentiment to the rampant antisemitism (which Fateh is also guilty of) to, of course, the actual socialist policies. In 2021, Omar pushed a bill that would funnel federal taxpayer dollars to localities to experiment with “universal basic income,” and then transition the country to a universal basic income program over the following decade.
Omar is not just some backbench congresswoman, either. Since her election in 2018, Omar has become a quasi-celebrity, a member of a group of lawmakers given the silly nickname of “the Squad” by liberal media. Omar appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, and New York Magazine, the former two before she was even sworn into Congress, and the latter two featuring her alongside then Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi. Omar was being propped up by Democrats as a key piece in the future of the party, and Democrats have repeatedly rallied around her to whitewash her antisemitic comments.
Featuring Omar and her like-minded socialist antisemites has already had an electoral effect on the Democratic Party. In 2024, Kamala Harris needed to select a strong running mate for her expedited presidential campaign. The obvious choice to everyone was Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of Pennsylvania, the largest swing state in the country. Shapiro was an electoral asset in Pennsylvania and in other swing states, a progressive who could convincingly portray himself as a moderate even as he dragged nuns to court to force them to pay for birth control.
Shapiro’s big problem was that he was Jewish, which made him unacceptable to the antisemitic socialists taking over the party, regardless of his views on Israel and Gaza. So Harris pivoted to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, to the cheers of the Democratic Socialists of America. According to the DSA, “Harris choosing Walz as a running mate has shown the world that DSA and our allies on the left are a force that cannot be ignored.”
Here is what Walz thinks of antisemitic socialist Ilhan Omar: “When I’m having a tough day or I’m out on about mile five of my run and I’m feeling kind of down, and the world is pressing on me, I think ‘Ilhan Omar is a congresswoman.’ And it just brightens you up.” Walz, meanwhile, was Omar’s top pick to be Harris’s running mate.
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Walz was a disaster, getting mopped up in the vice presidential debate by JD Vance and serving as Harris’s leader in male outreach for a campaign that alienated male voters. It isn’t even clear that the Harris campaign vetted him. Walz was a terrible pick, and Shapiro was the obviously correct one. It would be hard to argue with the Democratic Socialists of America, then, that they are the “force” that the Democratic Party can’t ignore.
The rise of socialism in Minneapolis can be thanked for that. Minneapolis has laid the groundwork for the rise of socialism in New York City and throughout the rest of the Democratic Party. Minneapolis has dictated the direction of the national Democratic Party, and the consequences will be felt outside the Twin Cities for years to come.