Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via AP, Pool File
- Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is seeking reelection to a second term.
- Frey faces numerous progressive challengers in the city's ranked-choice mayoral election.
- Polls in Minnesota closed at 8 pm local time and 9 pm ET.
What's at stake:
Minneapolis' first-term Mayor Jacob Frey is running for reelection against numerous challengers in the city's ranked-choice election, where all candidates will run on the same ballot.
The main Democratic Farmer-Laborer challengers to Frey are 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 are also running.
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 has made police and public safety the predominant issue in the mayor's race.
Along with the mayoral race, Minneapolis residents will also be voting on 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 opposes the proposal, which, in addition to his record on the issue, has 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 stance to reform but not replace the police department looms as a test of whether urban voters are more focused on their safety or the vision of social justice activists.
Access to affordable housing, rent costs, and the city's budget are issues also looming 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, are urging voters to rank both of them and to not rank Frey at all. But, as the Star-Tribune reported, it's unclear whether progressives will be able to 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, is 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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