Ward 10 and Feeding Our Future: connecting the dots

Coincidences abound when it comes to the Feeding Our Future scandal. In this post, we look at some of the links connecting the various scandals reverberating around Minneapolis Democratic politics to the alleged free-food fraud.

As we noted in the previous post, the state Democratic party’s executive committee met on Thursday night and passed a series of ex post facto bylaws to address the bruhaha at last Saturday’s Ward 10 endorsing convention for the local Minneapolis city council seat.

The state party then used the new bylaws to retroactively ban the challenger candidate, Nasri Warsame, from the state party, for life.

Earlier on Thursday, Warsame’s campaign manager, Abshir Omar Mahamed (former Feeding Our Future consultant), accused sitting Ward 5 city council member, Jeremiah Ellison, of assault. Specifically, Abshir has accused Ellison, without producing evidence, of punching him during last Saturday’s Ward 10 convention fiasco.

To summarize, Ellison is accused of punching one of his own campaign donors.

I’ve previously written about Jeremiah Ellison’s December 20, 2021, fundraiser at which no fewer than five future Feeding Our Future defendants donated a total of $3,000.

That $3,000 represents only 1/3 of the $9,000 Ellison raised at that event. Among the other 10 donors on that date is the name Abshir Mahamed. Since Minneapolis campaign records don’t include any other identifying information, we cannot confirm that this Abshir is the same person as Warsame’s campaign manager.

But we can confirm that Abshir Omar donated in 2021 the maximum $1,000 to the campaign of current state Sen. Omar Fateh (DFL-Minneapolis). Abshir used the same home address in donating to Fateh that he used in incorporating an LLC that same year (Tasho Neighborhood Development).

Omar Fateh is now facing his second (unrelated) ethics investigation at the Minnesota Senate, this time for untoward comments made against Republicans on the Seante floor.

You will recall that Senator Fateh returned 11 donations, totaling $11,000, that he received from figures associated with Feeding Our Future. To date, Fateh has not returned Mahamed’s $1,000.

Of the 11 donations that he did return, Fateh has three donors in common with Ellison. In addition to those three and Mahamed, Fateh and Ellison have a fifth donor in common. This individual has been mentioned in Feeding Our Future indictments, by their initials, but has not been charged with any crimes.

Alert readers will recall that Sen. Fateh went to bat in support of Feeding Our Future in its battles with the state Department of Education, in the months before the FBI investigation was made public.

Curiouser and curiouser.