Sen. Omar Fateh to challenge Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey

Fateh is the son of Somali immigrants: His father immigrated to America in 1963, and ended up in Bozeman, Mont. His mother came in the 1970s. Fateh was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Virginia, spending summers in Minneapolis.

He ran unsuccessfully for a Virginia school board in 2015, and moved to Minnesota later that year.

Two years after an unsuccessful 2018 House race for District 62A, he announced plans to challenge powerful incumbent Sen. Jeff Hayden in the DFL primary in District 62 in south Minneapolis. He upset Hayden and nabbed the DFL endorsement, and he went on to handily defeat Hayden in the primary, making him a shoo-in for the general election in the DFL-dominated district.

Party endorsing conventions were held online that year due to the pandemic, and at the time, Hayden raised the specter of voter fraud, questioning whether some voters lived in the district and calling the process “flawed.”

Two years later, Fateh’s brother-in-law and campaign volunteer was convicted of lying to a grand jury about returning absentee ballots for voters during the 2020 primary election. The charges sprang out of a wider federal investigation into misuse of the “agent delivery” process, which allows people to deliver ballots to election offices for voters with health problems or disabilities.