Jacob Frey

Frey rolled out reforms to the Minneapolis Police Department’s body camera policy in April 2018. The changes tied non-compliance to stricter disciplinary consequences for the first time. Following the changes, officer compliance with the body camera policy reached record highs.

Elected mayor in 2017, he was sworn in on January 2, 2018.

In 2018, the Minneapolis City Council voted for Minneapolis 2040, a comprehensive rezoning reform plan. According to Slate, the plan would "permit three-family homes in the city’s residential neighborhoods, abolish parking minimums for all new construction, and allow high-density buildings along transit corridors." Slate wrote that by implementing the plan, "Minneapolis will become the first major U.S. city to end single-family home zoning, a policy that has done as much as any to entrench segregation, high housing costs, and sprawl as the American urban paradigm over the past century."

Frey announced his candidacy for mayor of Minneapolis on January 3, 2017, and won the November 7 election. He was sworn into office on January 2, 2018.

In 2016, Frey authored an ordinance requiring polluters to pay fees based on the amount of pollution they produce. The fees are used to support green business improvements. Since the program’s launch, emissions linked to climate change have declined substantially. Frey and the City of Minneapolis were honored at the 2018 US Conference of Mayors for the program's success.

Frey was involved in drafting the council's 2016 paid sick leave ordinance and the 2017 minimum wage ordinance. He was one of the first council members to support a minimum wage ordinance. Frey authored the amendment to the minimum wage ordinance that gave small businesses a longer phase-in than large businesses for implementing the minimum wage.

As chair of the council's Elections Committee, Frey led the effort to pass an ordinance requiring landlords to provide tenants with voter registration information. The ordinance has served as a national model, with cities like Seattle and St. Paul following suit. Frey also led the effort to expand early voting access in Minneapolis ahead of the 2016 election, increasing the number of early voting sites in Minneapolis from one to five.

Frey met his second wife, Sarah Clarke, through community organizing in Minneapolis. The couple married in July 2016. Clarke is a lobbyist for Hylden Advocacy & Law, where she represents several business, non-profit, and community organizations at the Minnesota legislature and executive branch agencies. As of March 2020, they are expecting a child, due in September.

As a City Council member, Frey focused on affordable housing, environmental policy, workplace regulations, and voting access. He authored an amendment to the 2015 budget that increased funding for the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund. He also worked to get support for a project in a neighborhood he represented that offers affordable housing to people with a criminal record trying to restart their lives.

Frey ran in the 2013 Minneapolis City Council election to represent Ward 3. He received the DFL endorsement, as well as endorsements from over 40 elected officials and organizations. Frey's platform promised better constituent services, to spur residential development, increase the number and variety of small and local businesses, and push for full funding of affordable housing and address climate change. He defeated incumbent Diane Hofstede with over 60% of the vote and took office on January 2, 2014.

Frey has been active in community organizing since moving to Minneapolis. After a tornado struck North Minneapolis in 2011, Frey provided legal services to tenants who lost their homes. In 2012, before running for elected office, Frey founded and organized the first Big Gay Race, a 5K charity race to raise money for Minnesotans United for All Families, a political group organizing for marriage equality.

Jacob Frey married his first wife, Michelle Lilienthal, in 2010. They divorced in around early 2014.

Frey moved to Minneapolis in 2009 after graduating from Villanova Law School, and joined law firm Faegre & Benson (now Faegre Baker Daniels) before moving to law firm Halunen & Associates.

Frey grew up in Oakton, Virginia, a Washington, D.C., suburb, and received a track scholarship to attend the College of William & Mary, from which he graduated in 2004. His family is of Russian Jewish descent. After graduating with a degree in government, Frey received a contract from a shoe company to run professionally and competed for Team USA in the Pan American Games marathon, finishing in fourth place. During that time, he earned a J.D. degree from Villanova University, graduating cum laude in 2009.

Jacob Frey (/f r aɪ / FRY ; born July 23, 1981) is the mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He served on the Minneapolis City Council from 2013 until his election as mayor.

Frey is Minneapolis's second Jewish mayor, and its second-youngest after Al Hofstede, who was 34 when he was elected mayor in 1973. He campaigned on a platform of increasing support for affordable housing and improving police-community relations.