August 26, 2025
Dear Senator Fateh:
For the past week, I have seen “Fateh for Mayor” lawn signs across Minneapolis, which claim that you are DFL-endorsed. Some have appeared since August 22, the day that the Minnesota DFL Constitution, Bylaws and Rules Committee (CBRC) revoked the endorsement the Minneapolis DFL granted you on July 19. The CBRC revoked your endorsement because clear and convincing evidence had shown that the July 19 convention suffered from numerous procedural irregularities, including no valid ballot for mayor.
The Minneapolis DFL is subordinate to the Minnesota DFL, so as of August 22, you are not DFL-endorsed. Your lawn signs thus violate Minnesota Statute 211B.02, which says: “A person or candidate may not knowingly make, directly or indirectly, a false claim stating or implying that a candidate or ballot question has the support or endorsement of a major political party…”
In addition to your lawn signs which falsely claim DFL endorsement, the Minneapolis DFL has been suggesting the same. On August 26, its Bluesky profile was pinned with a post saying that you lead its slate of DFL-endorsed candidates, and on August 25, residents began receiving Minneapolis DFL mailers [Fig 1] that say the same. Your supporters have reacted gleefully (see here, here, here, and here), apparently delighted that misinformation is being spread on your behalf.
As the candidate, you set the tone of your campaign. You could immediately recall your lawn signs which falsely state that you are DFL-endorsed, and could tell your supporters, including those who run the Minneapolis DFL, that you do not condone misinformation of any kind.
So far you have done the opposite. Rather than behaving with integrity, you and your supporters (including Congresswoman Ilhan Omar) invoke tiresome appeals to victimhood, whining that “party insiders” overturned your endorsement “behind closed doors” and that they “disenfranchised thousands of delegates”. [Fig 2]
Let us set the record straight. The CBRC is a standing DFL Committee comprised not of “party insiders”, but of volunteers elected, every two years, by their peers in DFL units from across the state. They care about DFL integrity, and thus they offer their time to ensure that the DFL Constitution is upheld. The CBRC had received an unprecedented number of challenges about the July 19 convention, and following routine procedure, conducted a public hearing on August 17 where both challengers and challenged had equal time to present their best arguments.
After the public hearing, CBRC members conferred as a jury would, and then five days later, on August 22, publicly reported that the challengers had proven, by clear and convincing evidence, that the first mayoral ballot did not count all eligible and voting delegates, and that the second mayoral ballot did not include the name of an eligible candidate. The CBRC revoked your “endorsement” because there was no valid ballot for mayor.
In my opinion, the CBRC should have revoked all endorsements and resolutions from July 19, because the convention was plagued with flaws that contaminated every outcome, not just endorsement for mayor. Duly elected delegates had been dropped from the roster before the convention began. The Minneapolis DFL lost original caucus documents for an entire ward. During the convention, the process for upgrading alternates was at best chaotic and at worst a deliberate effort to not upgrade alternates for your competitors. The credentials list was unsecured and thus could have been manipulated while the convention was underway. Badges were handed out inconsistently. The separate seating requirement had completely disintegrated by the time the “raised badge” vote for mayor and park board began. All this was on top of the electronic balloting system which failed to count hundreds of votes, and the convention co-chairs not telling the body what they knew at the time.
You and your supporters have said nothing about these egregious flaws. You have said nothing about duly elected delegates who were prohibited from participating, or whose votes weren’t counted if they did. Rather, your supporters have asserted that these flaws are irrelevant, because in their alternative reality, you would have been endorsed anyway.
Here is a competing alternative reality. Had the first mayoral ballot been counted accurately, the second mayoral ballot would have included you, plus two competitors who together had received more than 50% on Ballot 1. Thus, it is unlikely that together they would have received less than 40% on Ballot 2. More plausibly, on Ballot 2, neither you nor anyone else would have received the requisite 60% and that given the very late hour, and required adjournment by 10 PM, there would not have been a Ballot 3. The convention would have adjourned with no mayoral candidate being endorsed.
But this is speculation about an alternative reality. Let’s end the speculation and stick with what we know. We know that the CBRC found, through clear and convincing evidence, that the convention was not run properly, and thus on August 22, the CBRC revoked the endorsement that the Minneapolis DFL granted you on July 19. We know that as of August 26, your lawn signs falsely state that you are DFL-endorsed, and thus in addition to spreading misinformation, those signs violate state law. We also know that as of August 26, the Minneapolis DFL Bluesky profile says that you are DFL-endorsed, and that you disseminating fundraising appeals which hint at the same.
I respectfully request that within 7 days, your campaign recall lawn signs containing false claims. I request that you ask the Minneapolis DFL to refrain from spreading misinformation about your campaign. I request that you refrain from publicly implying that “party insiders” unfairly deprived you of an endorsement that you “earned”. You earned nothing from a flawed convention which disenfranchised hundreds of delegates who preferred alternatives to you.
I look forward to you and the other mayoral candidates continuing your campaigns honorably, with a focus on the issues, free from the misinformation and distraction of false endorsement claims.
Thank you.
Yiscah Bracha
A Minneapolis voter and resident
Related:
Open Letter to Omar Fateh about His Campaign’s False Claims
Minneapolis DFL Mails False Fatah Endorsement to Voters in Defiance of State DFL
Hostile Takeover of State DFL Planned by DSA Co-Founder
Minneapolis DFL Placed on Probation, Fateh Endorsement Overturned
Minneapolis DFL Convention: A Summary of Challenges and Complaints
Thanks for mentioning that ALL the endorsements should have been voided. A friend of mine called the CBRC’s decision a “split the baby” decision, which I think is justified. Those who attended the entire Zoom meeting, and paid attention, heard Will Stancil make an absolutely airtight case for voiding the by-District Park Board endorsements – a case that was not even based on the general irregularities that plagued the entire Convention, but rather on specific violations of party rules which, if followed, would have resulted in no endorsements. In my opinion, the at-large endorsements were, as you point out, also tarred by the general irregularities that left it largely impossible to tell who was a Delegate at any point in time and who was not. But make no mistake – even if the one doesn’t think that’s a problem (!), the by-District endorsements were the result of “fatal errors” beyond that.
Well said, thank you for this thoughtful piece.
Spreading disinformation is Trumpian and no way to build trust beyond the insiders of a campaign.
This kind of shrill binary partisan rhetoric serves no one. Trump is not the subject of this article in any way. Your comment is not only irrelevant, it pegs you as an ideologue. Neither Trump nor the Republican party has a monopoly on disinformation. The Democrats are just as guilty. For perspective I have never voted for a single Republic candidate in any election. I suggest a quest for truth instead of axe grinding.
I thought the meeting was available to the public to watch on zoom? How is that behind closed doors? I did not watch but it looked like all you had to do was pre-register to get a link to watch the meeting. Or maybe I am missing something?
That is false. We DID get to see the two sides present their cases in a public setting (Erlandson et al vs Dan/Ann et al). However, we DID NOT get to see the CBRC committee members deliberate and vote on the challenge. The Zoom link for the deliberations was private, and my requests to the CBRC for the Meeting Minutes have went unanswered. Why is the CBRC afraid of people learning how the deliberations went? Especially since the DNC Charter and DFL Constitution prohibits “Secret Ballots” and “Secret Meetings” except in specific cases, which wouldn’t have been met here.
Do you think Sen. Fateh reads this rag?
Our standards for comments are: Thoughtful, reasoned, civil. The policy/political views of commenters are irrelevant to applying these standards.
To date we’ve had 1,000+ comments on our articles. We’ve deleted 1 comment in total. This speaks volumes to the civility of our readers, regardless of their viewpoints on our authors commentary. Insults do not meet our community standards.
I appreciate the Minneapolis Times. The Star Tribune has been captured by ideology and is no longer a journalistic enterprise. They moderate comments on articles according to their ideological stance and allow no discourse to challenge such decisions. No communication is addressed, just ignored. They craft a narrative to present the world as it suits them.
Fateh supporters are posting photos on social media of them appearing to lit drop (as late as yesterday) flyers claiming he is DFL endorsed. Many of them post photos where that portion is covered up. But others posted the entire flyer which says DFL-endorsed.
It isn’t false to say the CBRC decided this behind closed doors. If they don’t like us saying that the decision was made “behind closed doors”, then perhaps the CBRC shouldn’t have done this in “closed/executive session”. The CBRC is NOT a jury. They are a political committee that is subject to the Open Meetings requirements found in both the DNC Charter and the DFL Constitution..
So Fateh violates state law by posting lawn signs falsely claiming that he is DFL-endorsed and by continuing to drop literature at home that falsely claim that he is DFL-endorsed. And your response is to whine that after a 4-hour public hearing, the two dozen + CBRC members conferred privately, exactly as a jury would.
Yep. Same old tricks. Your guy is out there flagrantly violating state law so you change the subject, and rhetorically elevate a nothing-burger to a capital offense.
FYI. If you think that normal, sane, emotionally balanced ppl can’t see through this you are mistaken. They can.
I would note that even the city council deliberates in closed door session when it comes to litigation and similar things. The legislature also does not conduct all its deliberations s in public either. Nor do juries or judges. All have evidence presented in public and deliberate in private. DFL no different
The DFL spells out its process for hearing challenges on this page.
https://www.dflcbrc.org/challenges#h.vx9yn5wxae58
They followed the standard process for these challenges (and a reminder, more than 100 had been filed, and the CBRC decided to hear 98 of them).
Under the section headed “DECISION”, it says “Following a hearing, the parties are dismissed from the meeting, and the panel or committee enters into closed deliberation to discuss the challenge. Depending on timing, this deliberation may be postponed or continued to another meeting.”
The phrase “closed deliberation” is highlighted. Standard procedure.
The DECISION section continues as follows: “The body first decides whether, based upon clear and convincing evidence, the alleged action occurred and whether that action violated party rules. If so, the hearing body determines whether the violation was of such a degree that it materially affected the outcome at the meeting. If the body finds it was, the body determines an appropriate remedy based upon the circumstances.”
In the CBRC final report, published August 22, the hearing body established that alleged actions occurred. Here is the link to the report. Read it yourself.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kBH0MHwvaiKo9mH26kPyqaDLOlD6z3rS/view
In its conclusion, the report says, “The CBRC determines that the Challengers have proven by clear and convincing evidence that the endorsement of Omar Fateh for mayor of Minneapolis was facilitated by use of a flawed electronic voting system which caused a substantial undercount on the first ballot of the mayoral endorsement and which caused another candidate to be dropped from consideration after such first ballot.”
It then goes on to say that the first mayoral ballot must be disregarded because it did not count all eligible and voting delegates, and the second mayoral ballot must be disregarded because it did not contain the name of an eligible candidate.
Not exactly hysterical, suspicious or political stuff.
The report also says that “The CBRC determines that Challengers have proven based upon clear and convincing evidence that the credential and upgrading process was flawed …” and then goes on to cite four specific flaws: 1) The entire set of W5 documents was lost. 2) The master check-in sheet was unsecured so that ballot IDs could have been manipulated (we have since heard two such stories about that). 3) The credentials sheet was unsecured and was accessed by campaigns. 4) Not all upgraded alternates received required blue badges.
In my opinion, these flaws should have invalidated everything that came out of the convention, not just endorsement for mayor. But the CBRC, in its closed deliberations, apparently decided otherwise. I do not know why, but I suggest you note the difference between my disappointment and yours: You insinuate that something nefarious was going on because as per standard procedure, the CBRC deliberated privately. I let it go, and assume that they had reasons unknown to me.