Minneapolis mayoral candidate and state Sen. Omar Fateh (DFL-Minneapolis) canvassed University of Minnesota dorms Tuesday, one day before the mayoral election.

Fateh and his team were joined by Rep. Ilhan Omar (DFL-Minn.) and Council member Robin Wonsley (Ward 2). The politicians came together for a campaigning effort, called Dorm Storm, where members of the community and students joined them in knocking on dormitory doors across the University’s campus. 

Minneapolis voting opened Tuesday morning, with ranked-choice voting being used to decide the race’s winner. Winning may not require candidates to be voters’ first choice, but candidates may need enough second and third place rankings in order to stay competitive. 

Fateh said he decided to canvas the University a day before the election to educate students about the voting process and engage with them ahead of today’s election.  

“It’s good to knock out the doors and talk to them about the importance of voting, empowering their voice, and get to them at their doors,” Fateh said. “We’re selling them on the vision of having students centered in our decision-making process at city hall.” 

A shooting in Dinkytown left one person dead and two others injured on Saturday. Fateh said he would increase funding for public safety around the campus by $10 million, with funding coming out of the state’s higher education budget, to improve the safety of Dinkytown if elected.  

There are only four small grocery stores, less than one mile away in the main neighborhoods surrounding the University campus, which has sparked discussion on whether or not the University is a food desert. Fateh said he will combat the issue by working to have a city-run grocery store on campus. 

Fateh said he will work with city council members to make the grocery store become a reality and brought up challenges he faced when he was working to pass the Northstar Promise, which offers free college tuition for Minnesota residents with adjusted incomes below $80,000 at two- and four-year colleges.  

“There’s many instances that I could point to in which things seemed like an uphill battle or impossible, but because young people were engaged, the young people educated us along the process, it became a reality,” Fateh said.  “I’m confident that this can be a reality.” 

While there is no public evidence that Fateh has been charged with fraud, there are investigations surrounding his campaign and political activity, such as an investigation done in 2022 by the Minnesota Senate subcommittee on the ethics of his involvement with a nonprofit known as Somali TV and scrutiny over campaign contributions linked to donors involved in the Feeding Our Future fraud case. 

Fateh said the claims were baseless and that he went through a process and cooperated fully. He added that Senate Republicans initiated these accusations. 

“There was a Senate Republican-led ethics committee that unanimously cleared me, and actually, at that time, I was going through a primary challenge at the Senate in 2022,” Fateh said. 

On a separate note, canvassers and the politicians that joined them said they were excited to help young voters navigate the political system. Omar said she wants young people to feel like they are a part of the election. 

“We’ve always seen younger people as part of the decision-making process, and oftentimes, younger people are forgotten because they don’t show up in the election walls,” Omar said. “When you vote, that is power, and we want younger people to realize that power to make change for themselves.”

Fateh and Omar both said they have faced threats and hateful rhetoric over their Somali and Muslim identities, and both attribute it to the success of immigrants in civic participation. 

“There seems to be a new ginned-up hateful rhetoric that we are seeing, not just against Somalis, but against Muslims, against immigrants, and we are fighting that with joy, with unity, with community, because we know that Minnesota has always welcomed us,” Omar said. “Minnesota didn’t just welcome refugees, it sent one to Congress.”