The communist Omar Fateh won the primary to become the new mayor of Minneapolis.

The Somali communist and current state representative Omar Fateh secured the support of the Minnesota Democratic Party and is emerging as the new mayor of the state's most important city, Minneapolis.

On Saturday night, the convention of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL, by its English acronym) took place, where for the first time since 1997, the party chose to intervene in the internal party race and support a specific candidate.

This is how Fateh was declared the winner, and in his victoryspeech he emphasized to his supporters that they have been "witnesses to the rejection of politics as usual", warning that "the status quo will do whatever it takes to hold on to power."

The mayor alleges fraud

Fateh defeated the current mayor of the city, Jacob Frey, a politician also from the far left who has boasted repeatedly about having removed the police forces from the streets and having let the cityburn when the protests over the death of the African American criminal George Floyd occurred in 2020.

Strangely, in line with the declining state of Minneapolis, neither the mayor nor his supporters acknowledged the results of the vote, alleging that electoral fraud had occurred that they will report to the courts.

Witnesses confirmed that the online votingsystem, which required delegates to cast their votes from their cell phones, crashed in the middle of the voting process.

Party officials rejected the fraud allegations, although they acknowledged that the system had slowed down due to the unstable internet connection in the venue and that the votes took more than two hours to be counted and tabulated in the system.

The general elections, in November

Although Fateh'snomination represents a historic event and a sign of where the current Democratic Party is heading, as happened with the victory of Ugandan socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York, there is still opposition to his candidacy.

Despite having lost the nomination, Frey announced that he will still seek his third term and will run as a candidate in the general elections next November, where he will face Fateh again.

In both 2017 and 2021, although he eventually won the elections, Frey had difficulties winning the support of the party's activists, who believed that the current mayor "had not done enough" to stop "police and racial violence" in the city.

The Somali communist is also not free from scandals. In anticipation of his victory, La Derecha Diario published a profile of the socialist candidate a few days ago, showing that Fateh and his advisers are involved in multiple local corruption cases.