Last month, the Minnesota Democratic Farm-Labor Party (DFL) held its annual convention, and for the first time since 1997, decided to endorse a candidate for mayor of Minneapolis.
Incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey was in bad odor with the radicals after committing sacrileges such as partially re-funding the police and mostly ignoring the democratic socialist's agenda. The DFL decided to throw its weight behind a young democratic socialist state senator, Omar Fateh.
That's when the fireworks started.
The first vote was taken around 5:00 p.m. It was taken using smartphones, and the delegates immediately ran into problems.
Apparently, there were problems with Wi-Fi, the results didn't tally correctly, and several dozen delegates complained their vote wasn't counted. Not only that, but the DFL admitted it erroneously eliminated candidate DeWayne Davis after the first round of voting due to an undercount of 176 votes.
The clusterfark enraged supporters of Jacob Frey, who walked out before the second round of voting could be held. Although the walkout may have resulted (no one is really sure) in a lack of quorum, the vote was held by a show of hands, giving the victory to state senator Omar Fateh, a democratic socialist.
"Today, we witnessed a rejection of politics as usual," said Fateh in his speech accepting the DFL endorsement.
Either that, or we saw an old-fashioned thumb on the scale giving Fateh the victory.
The result came after Frey supporters abandoned the arena around 9pm, with campaign officials alleging the party's online delegate voting system had completely broken down.
Minneapolis DFL Party official Briana Rose Lee disputed those claims, telling Axios that the system worked, but was bogged down by slow devices and internet connections at Target Center.
Frey's campaign intends to appeal with the state-level DFL Party, a spokesperson told Axios.
What happened: After delegates took the first mayoral endorsement vote on their smartphones at around 5pm, party officials took nearly two hours to tabulate and report results.
As the count dragged on, officials with Frey and Jazz Hampton's campaigns questioned whether the online system had recorded all delegates' choices, citing a smaller-than-expected number of votes.
Given the many problems with the entire process, including the fact that hundreds of votes were probably never counted, the Minnesota State DFL rescinded Fateh's endorsement.
Chairman of the state DFL, Richard Carlbom, issued a statement saying, “After a thoughtful and transparent review of the challenges, the Constitution, Bylaws & Rules Committee found substantial failures in the Minneapolis Convention’s voting process on July 19th, including an acknowledgement that a mayoral candidate was errantly eliminated from contention."
“As a result, the Constitution, Bylaws & Rules Committee has vacated the mayoral endorsement.”
Squad member Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, joined other democratic socialists in condemning the state party's action in a statement.
The four-term congresswoman and other signers condemned the decision as an "extremely dangerous precedent" that "will undermine the DFL endorsing process going forward and fails to center the will of delegates."
"Right now, there is a clear tension between the progressive Democrats who are challenging the status quo and moderate Democrats," the statement reads, calling it "extremely disheartening" that the first Black mayoral candidate to be DFL-endorsed in Minneapolis in the last three decades had the endorsement revoked.
Zoom in: The statement, first reported by Axios, was signed by Omar and seven members of Minneapolis' state legislative delegation, three Hennepin County commissioners, one school board member and five Minneapolis City Council members, most of whom have formally endorsed Fateh.
These champions of democracy don't seem to care that hundreds of votes may not have been counted, and worse, no one seems to know what happened. I guess "fairness" goes out the window when it doesn't serve the interests of your radical candidate.
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