Minnesota state Sen. Omar Fateh, a self-declared democratic socialist now running for mayor of Minneapolis, opened his campaign office to support George Floyd rioters and called for banning tear gas and rubber bullets, returned thousands in campaign cash tied to one of the nation’s largest fraud schemes, and has pushed to compel Amazon to implement mandatory prayer breaks for Muslim workers.
In a previous role as a Minneapolis community specialist, Fateh cited involvement in efforts to pressure Amazon to allow East African Muslim employees time off during the workday for prayer. “What we know is that the large corporations are going to take advantage of folks, especially if they’re not well versed on their rights,” Fateh said.
Fateh, the first Somali American in the Minnesota Senate, has also expressed disdain for the term “progressive,” arguing it’s not far-left enough. He prefers the label “democratic socialist,” stating: “What bothered me about the term ‘progressive’ is that it shifted from having a meaning to being a spectrum — where ‘progressive’ candidates don’t have to support [housing, education, and health care as rights], that they take corporate and oil money.” He added, “Democratic socialism is about those convictions about what everyone deserves, those rights. It’s a yes or no question.”
During the George Floyd riots in 2020, Fateh opened his campaign office in South Minneapolis as a hub for protesters, providing food, water, and first aid as nearby buildings burned. “We paused the campaign because my campaign office was on Lake Street and Park Avenue, where a lot of the rioting and fires were,” Fateh stated. “The gas station right next to my office was burned to the ground. We opened my office overnight for protesters to come by, administer first aid, provide food and water to people.”
Fateh has also called for banning the use of tear gas and rubber bullets by law enforcement, describing such crowd-control measures as “wartime weapons” that inflict lifelong injuries and “should be banned.”
In 2022, Fateh’s campaign accepted $11,000 in donations from individuals tied to the now-infamous Feeding Our Future scandal, a scheme that defrauded federal food programs of millions meant to feed low-income children. Seven of Fateh’s donors were directly named in FBI search warrants, while others listed addresses and employers linked to the fraud. After public exposure, Fateh returned the money and insisted he was unaware of the allegations until the warrants became public.
One of the ringleaders of the scam, Liban Yasin Alishire, donated to Fateh’s campaign and appeared in photos with him. Alishire later pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering after falsely reporting that he served 870,000 meals and fraudulently obtained $2.4 million in federal food-aid funds, keeping $714,000 for himself. He used the money to purchase a resort and apartment in Kenya, a Ford F-150 pickup, and a boat, and paid over $200,000 in kickbacks to a Feeding Our Future employee. A judge released Alishire despite prosecutors’ warning that he was a flight risk. At least three of the indicted participants had already fled the country.
Fateh’s campaign team claimed he had no knowledge of the fraud when the donations were made and denounced the scheme in a public statement. Yet in the summer of 2021, Fateh appeared at a public event with Feeding Our Future’s director, criticizing the state’s decision to pause funding to the organization.
This is not the first scandal Fateh and his team have been involved in. In 2022, a volunteer for Fateh’s primary campaign was convicted of making false statements to a grand jury during an investigation into absentee ballot irregularities. Regardless, Fateh continues to gain traction in progressive circles. His platform includes taxpayer-funded college tuition for illegal aliens, carbon taxes, replacing police with “alternative” emergency response teams, and lobbying for a local income tax targeting high earners. Fateh also led a protest vote against President Joe Biden over the administration’s support for Israel, called Rep. Lauren Boebert a “white supremacist” for opposing free college for illegal aliens, and labeled the U.S. policing system “systemically white supremacist.”
