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Brandt Williams
Minneapolis

Jacob Frey, Mpls. City Council member, will run for mayor

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Jacob Frey
Jacob Frey
Jennifer Simonson | MPR News 2013 file

Jacob Frey, a first-term Minneapolis City Council member, announced on Tuesday that he will try to unseat current mayor Betsy Hodges.

Given the city's weak mayor system and independent school and park boards, Frey said the mayor has to be good at building coalitions.

"That's something I'm well equipped to do," he said. "I think I've done it very well on the City Council representing North Loop, downtown, the arts district. It's something that I very much intend to do as mayor as well."

Frey represents part of downtown's warehouse business district and northeast Minneapolis.

Before his election, he practiced law and focused on workplace discrimination cases.

Frey is the fourth announced challenger to Hodges. The other three are former Minneapolis NAACP president Nekima Levy-Pounds, filmmaker Aswar Rahman and Raymond Dehn, a Democrat in the state House.

Frey said he would be a very accessible and public mayor. He supports a higher minimum wage and has sponsored measures to require Minneapolis landlords to give new tenants voter registration information and to reduce the penalty for possession of marijuana, among other proposals.

"We're going to be out in front of issues," Frey said. "We're going to have bi-weekly press briefings where you can ask me any question you want and I'll stand there and I'll answer it. We'll have a whole lot of opportunities to explain to the city where we're going, to pitch the big vision and then to advocate to ultimately get it done."