Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey wins tough reelection fight over a slew of challengers
Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via AP, Pool File
What's at stake:
Minneapolis' first-term Mayor Jacob Frey won reelection against numerous challengers in the city's ranked-choice election, where all candidates ran on the same ballot.
The main Democratic Farmer-Laborer challengers to Frey were former state lawmaker Kate Knuth, community organizer Sheila Nehzad, Cedar-Riverside Community Council leader AJ Awed, and attorney Clint Conner. A smattering of Republican, independent, and third-party candidates also ran.
Frey has faced local and national scrutiny for his handling of crime and policing issues in the city following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and the ensuing months of protests and civil unrest that Floyd's murder sparked around the country.
The spotlight on that shooting made police and public safety the predominant issue in the mayor's race.
Along with reflecting Frey, Minneapolis residents rejected a proposed charter amendment which, if passed, would direct the city government to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety. Frey opposed the proposal, which, in addition to his record on the issue, caused friction between him and the City Council and made him a target of progressives.
Like other cities, Minneapolis has seen a spike in violent crime during the pandemic and after Floyd's murder. Frey's ran on reforming but not replacing the police department, and his victory suggests the city's voters were more focused on safety concerns than the vision of social justice activists.
Access to affordable housing, rent costs, and the city's budget also loomed large in the mayor's election. Voters will also directly weigh in on those topics with proposed charter amendments on allowing the City Council to devise rent control protocols and would change the structure of the city government to give the mayor's office more power.
Ranked-choice or instant-runoff voting, which Minneapolis has used in its city elections since 2009, ensures that the winning candidate does so with a majority, not a plurality, of the vote. If neither candidate wins a majority of the vote outright, the lowest-performing candidates are eliminated, and the second choices of voters who ranked them first are reallocated up to other candidates, and so on until one candidate eventually gets over 50%.
Ranked-choice voting also lends itself to creative alliances and coalitions, like the one between Knuth and Nezhad, who, along with other progressives, urged voters to rank both of them and to not rank Frey at all. But, as the Star-Tribune reported, it was unclear whether progressives could unite around a single candidate to topple the incumbent mayor.
"I'm asking you not to rank our current mayor," Rep. Ilhan Omar said in endorsing both Knuth and Nezhad, according to the Star-Tribune. "Both of these women are qualified and passionate. One of them would make an excellent leader for Minneapolis, and both of them would be a better fit for the city than the current mayor."
Frey's team, however, was confident in their chances of winning a second term.
"As we head into the November election, we've gathered support from state and federal lawmakers, local officials and every union that's endorsed in the mayoral race," Frey's campaign manager Joe Radinovich told the Star-Tribune. "When the votes come in, we are confident that we'll show strong support in every corner of this city."
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