Hello, True Blue Moderates. I knew you’d come.
Let’s talk about Mayor Jacob Frey, the enigma. He’s a two-term mayor with a message suggesting he’s got a zero tolerance policy on encampments. Yet he has presided over an endless string of encampment tragedies. We’ve seen shootings, fires, and a general wack-a-mole strategy pushing the problem from block to block. Those are his results.
He’s held one indignant press conference after another, scolding his critics for not understanding how unacceptable and unsafe encampments are. But somehow the people in those encampments continue to exist, unhoused. The tragedies keep coming. Public safety issues in affected neighborhoods persist. The zero tolerance rhetoric isn’t getting results.
It’s the same familiar blame shifting Frey has used to evade accountability on police. The city’s public safety conversation is forever trapped in 2021. His campaign has never stopped arguing it’s actually his city council detractors who are at fault. Pay no attention to the record pay raises and the large police budget increases — approved every year since 2020.
The Frey campaign needs you to ignore that Amir Locke was killed by MPD a month after Frey’s second inauguration — following a reelection campaign where Frey promised to end no knock warrants. Put it out of your mind that MPD is still ignoring victims — sometimes even blaming them for getting shot. They hope enough time has passed that you’ve forgotten his 2017 mayoral campaign theme was fixing violent crime and addressing police community relations.
Disregard Frey’s allergic reaction to police accountability; his curious resistance to negotiations with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights over the MPD settlement agreement; the resignation of his city attorney who couldn’t stomach participating in the shielding of MPD. Don’t dwell on Frey rejecting the idea of incorporating the failed federal consent decree (derailed by Trump) into the state agreement.
Is your memory short enough to have forgotten that the strong mayor ballot measure passed four years ago? Mayor Frey recently resurfaced his “14 bosses” argument from 2021. He told the Charter Commission that department leaders who work for him (and only him) are at risk of confusion about whether or not he is their boss.
I tend to believe this is a lie because it’s so ludicrous. And if it’s true, he’s really advertising his incompetence as a manager.
Frey is recycling this “who’s in charge?” argument because he wants the Charter Commission to put forward a ballot question stripping the city council of confirmation power for his appointments to certain department director positions. Those departments include: Community Planning & Economic Development, Public Works, Civil Rights, Health, Emergency Management, Regulatory Services, and Assessor.
The city’s executive wants his appointment power for big, important departments to be absolute. He thinks the legislative branch should have no say in the matter. If such a constitutional amendment was pursued by a governor or a US president, we’d call it an undemocratic power grab.
Frey needs you to believe every alternative to him is a dangerous freak because dwelling on his record would suggest he’s a risky choice. So with the help of a political money and messaging machine funded by corporate interests and the city’s worst landlords, his one time opponent Emily Koski — a moderate if the word means anything — was transformed into a member of the DSA.
The roster of “DSA-aligned” council members reached 9 of 13 this year, according to the mega-millionaires who fund Frey’s several PACs. But that number is a lie. Less than a third of current members could be described as DSA. Team Frey have redefined socialism to mean anyone Frey is incapable of working with.
This dynamic may benefit Frey, but the “moderate DFL” war on socialism is counterproductive, bad for the city, and just plain dumb. You may have seen that tv infomercial posing as a documentary, stoking the red scare (likely funded by the same sort of interests who fund Frey’s PACs). It’s the style of propaganda that you can imagine Trump citing to justify deploying soldiers to city streets.
Moderate friends, I can relate. I have ranked Frey in prior elections because I was dubious about rounding out my ballot with a crank candidate. In 2025 I have seen too much. It probably won’t surprise anyone that I did not include him on my ballot this year.
Don’t be blinded by scare tactics and lumping these candidates together under one epithet or another. I understand that “Don’t Rank Frey” might be a bridge too far. But you have an actual menu with very different choices. Maybe you’d consider dropping our troubled two-term mayor to third on your ballot?
If you’re looking for suggestions, my first choice is Rev. DeWayne Davis, someone I believe to be squarely in the Minneapolis mainstream, who can lead with humility and integrity. If you need a second moderate choice, consider lawyer and entrepreneur Jazz Hampton. And if you’ve graduated to a “DSA-aligned” level of frustration with the Frey status quo, there is Sen. Omar Fateh on the left side of the spectrum.