Sen. Omar Fateh's Minneapolis mayoral campaign office vandalized, officials say
The Minneapolis mayoral campaign office of Minnesota state Sen. Omar Fateh was vandalized earlier this week with a threatening message, campaign officials said.
Fateh's campaign released an image of a written message they allege was left at the scene, reading, "Somali Muslim — this warning is no joke."
His office filed a police report on Wednesday. Fateh, 35, said in a statement his campaign won't be "deterred by hate speech and vandalism."
"We will not back down to Islamophobia. I will not be bullied or intimidated," Fateh said. "The people of Minneapolis are demanding change, and I will continue fighting for it. My team and I are dedicated to continuing to connect with Minneapolis residents and winning this election. We will not be stopped."
Fateh's campaign manager Akhilesh Menawat says Fateh has faced threats in the past, which made the vandalism particularly alarming.
"Omar's name was on Vance Boelter's list," said Menawat.
Boelter is accused of killing Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, as well as wounding state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife.
"This is not something that we can look at and say, 'Oh this is nothing,'" said Menawat. "We are not backing down. We're not being afraid of Islamophobia. We're not going to stand here and say this is going to stop us from doing work."
In a statement, Mayor Jacob Frey said he spoke with Fateh on Wednesday and his "office, MPD, and our administration all stand ready to help."
Frey added that crews were dispatched on Thursday morning "to scrub the vandalism from the building."
"Acts of Islamophobia and hate against any religion or ethnicity have no place in Minneapolis," Frey said.
The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called for authorities to investigate the vandalism as a hate crime.
"We strongly condemn this cowardly and hateful act of intimidation targeting Senator Fateh," said CAIR-MN Executive Director Jaylani Hussein. "This alleged threat is not just against one individual — it is an attack on Minnesota's Somali, Muslim, and immigrant communities, and on our democratic process.
Minneapolis police say they have referred the case to their Behavioral Threat Assessment Team.
The incident came about a month after the Minnesota DFL Party revoked its endorsement of Fateh, a democratic socialist, following Frey's successful challenge of the Minneapolis DFL's July endorsement of the senator, claiming there was an "extraordinarily high" number of uncounted votes produced by the "highly flawed and untested" electronic voting system used at the convention.
The Minneapolis DFL — which itself was put on two years' probation by the state party and barred from making any endorsements in the current mayoral race — has since appealed the revocation.
Several fellow DFLers formally criticized the state party's decision, including U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who herself was the target of recent anti-Somali statements made by Republican President Trump after his allies in Congress attempted to censure her over social media posts critical of the legacy of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Fateh, who was born in Washington, D.C. to parents from Somalia, was the first Somali American and Muslim elected to the Minnesota House, where he's currently in his second term representing the south Minneapolis-focused District 62.