by Steve Timmer

Aug 23, 2025, 1:30 PM

The state DFL spits on the Minneapolis DFL

Most of you know that the DFL’s Constitution, Bylaws, and Rules Committee, also known as the Star Chamber (kidding, it’s referred to by its acronym CBRC), stripped state Sen. Omar Fateh of the endorsement for mayor that he earned at the recent Minneapolis DFL convention. The CBRC issued a draft opinion of its decision on August 21st; I am not aware of a final version of it. There were complaints lodged about serious problems with the electronic voting system on the first vote (there were), which led to an undercount of votes. There were submissions, mostly by the Mayor Frey campaign and the Fateh campaign, to the CBRC, and there was a hearing on the matter. You can read the draft decision at the link above.

You should first disabuse yourself of the notion that the hearing was about finding out who really won the endorsement.

Contrary to the position of the Challenged Parties [the Fateh campaign and others], there is no requirement [but apparently it wouldn’t be prohibited, either; perhaps some kind of de minimus test that would be applicable here] in the CBRC Rules of Procedure for Challenges, or in the DFL Official Call, Challenges, page 30, that Challengers must establish that a proven allegation was of such significance that an outcome would have been materially different had such a proven violation not occurred.

Paging Gilbert and Sullivan. You really have to admire the sheer pettifogging brilliance of that.

As you will read if you wade through the opinion, a delegate raised a point of order about the large discrepancy between the number of delegates credentialed and the number of votes on the first ballot. The presiding officer said the point was in order, and a motion was made to redo the first ballot. The motion was put to a vote and it failed, accepting the results of the first ballot.

Nowhere in the CBRC’s decision will you find any discussion or finding about any impropriety in the point of order, submitting it to a vote, or voting the motion down and accepting the results, flawed as they were, on the first ballot. The CBRC apparently believed this was all within the power of the convention. The CBRC certainly did not find or intimate skullduggery. (Since that is true, it is hard to see how the first ballot could be the basis for voiding the second vote, too.)

By the time this happened, the hard deadline to adjourn was approaching, and the convention decided to suspend the rules and proceed to a second mayoral vote by a show of badges. This happened at about the time that the Frey campaign told its delegates to leave, hoping to deny a quorum, but it backfired. The quorum held (with Frey support at maybe thirty percent, this is not a big surprise), and by a show of badges, Fateh was endorsed.

The CBRC did not quarrel with anything about the conduct of the second ballot.

To summarize, and because it can’t be said enough, the CBRC did not object to the treatment of, and the acceptance of, the results of the first ballot by the convention. It also did not object to the manner of the conduct of the second, endorsing ballot for Fateh.

After the convention was over, Frey campaign operatives examined first ballot records, made a spreadsheet, and determined that DeWayne Davis received a whisker more than twenty percent on the first ballot, and not a whisker under twenty percent, and should not have been dropped on the second, and endorsing ballot, which was just between Fateh and Frey.

That is the ONLY basis for the CBRC decision.

Among the people who are NOT complaining about Davis being dropped or the Fateh endorsement is candidate DeWayne Davis.

The only bitchers about this are Jacob Frey supporters who shed crocodile tears for DeWayne Davis.

There ought to be a standing requirement for making complaints.

Repeating myself yet again, the CBRC did not find anything wrong with the decision of the convention delegates to accept the results of the first ballot — the delegates did so knowingly. There was no attempt by the CBRC to claim that the convention lacked the authority to do that.

What the CBRC has done is deny the delegates to the convention their sovereignty over it. I don’t know, but I wonder what percentage of the CBRC is from Minneapolis.

Parenthetically, one of the annoying things to me about all of this is that although I don’t know the CBRC members – well, I know one of them – I am sure all of them are familiar with, have heard or made themselves, motions to amend or suspend rules during conventions; they are, after all, the DFL’s rules gurus. Sometimes suspensions and amendments must happen to get important convention business done.

In spite of all of this, the CBRC drew itself up to its full height and said:

The CBRC determines that the Challengers have proven by clear and convincing evidence that the endorsement of Omar Fateh for mayor of Minneapolis was facilitated by use of a flawed electronic voting system which caused a substantial undercount on the first ballot of the mayoral endorsement and which caused another candidate to be dropped from consideration after such first ballot.

The CBRC determines that the Challengers have proven by clear and convincing evidence that the first ballot of the mayoral endorsement must be disregarded in its entirety by reason of the fact that it did not count all eligible and voting delegates.

The CBRC determines that the Challengers have proven by clear and convincing evidence that the second ballot of the mayoral endorsement must be disregarded in its entirety by reason of the fact that it did not include the name of an eligible candidate.

For reasons stated earlier, the last paragraph of the conclusions does not follow from the penultimate one because the convention ACCEPTED the first ballot. The delegates knew there was an undercount and they accepted it anyway. Again, the CBRC said nothing about that. The only persons who could possibly legitimately whine about the decision is DeWayne Davis and his supporters.

To claim that the first ballot was grounds to invalidate the second one is puerile sophistry.

Here’s Jacob Frey’s two cents:

“I am proud to be a member of a party that believes in correcting our mistakes,” Frey said. “I look forward to having a full and honest debate with Senator Fateh about our city’s future, with the outcome now resting squarely where it should — with all the people of Minneapolis.”

Frey says he wants a democratic process in the race for mayor. It’s too bad he sought and got an undemocratic decision taking away a democratic decision from the DFL convention.