Omar Fateh, who is currently a state senator, is among seven mayoral candidates campaigning to lead the city, the largest in the state with a population of 415,000. The election is Nov. 4.
The current mayor is Jacob Frey, a Democrat, who is seeking a third and final term.
Frey, who is accused of being too moderate, has repeatedly vetoed the left-wing city council and was not endorsed by the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. That endorsement went to Fateh, who has referred to himself as a Democratic socialist.
Brigitte Gabriel, founder and president of ACT for America, predicts the city’s sizable population of Somalis will help get Fateh into the mayor’s office.
"Minneapolis is mini-Mogadishu. He doesn't need anybody else to vote for him,” she says. “The people that voted for Ilhan Omar are the 80,000 refugees that Obama imported and dropped in Minnesota.”
Just like the congresswoman is safe from a challenger, Gabriel predicts Fateh could win in November thanks to the same bloc of voters.
The current population of Somali-Americans living in Minnesota is estimated to be 86,600. Their numbers can be traced back to the 1990s, when the first Somalis came to the U.S. as refugees fleeing civil war.
In Minneapolis, where approximately 22,000 identify as Somali, the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood has been nicknamed “Little Mogadishu” for its concentration of Somalis.
According to Gabriel, she predicts the mayoral election will be subjected to voter fraud from the Somali population, in particular ballot harvesting.
Fateh's brother-in-law, Mohamed, was charged with voter fraud in 2020 related to absentee ballots. He was later convicted of perjury by a federal jury for lying to a grand jury.
