After winning the DFL endorsement at the Fifth Congressional District Convention in May, Keith Ellison has come closer than any black person (or Native American, Latino, Hmong, or Somali, for that matter), to representing Minnesota in Congress. If he wins the September 12 primary in the overwhelmingly Democratic Minneapolis, about the only thing that could keep him from taking Martin Sabo’s seat come January 2007 would be, in the words of the old saw, getting caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. The primary is his to lose—and opponents Mike Erlandson (current Congressman Martin Sabo’s chief of staff), former State Senator Ember Reichgott Junge, and Minneapolis City Councilmember Paul Ostrow all know that.
And yet, that is not such a far-fetched possibility. His past ties to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, the unpaid parking tickets, and the public hand slaps for failing to follow campaign financial-disclosure rules have certainly given his detractors something to work with.
Ellison was born in Detroit in 1963. The middle child in a family of five boys, he was raised in what he calls a “very Catholic family” by parents who expected their sons to achieve. Ellison’s mother, Clida Cora Martinez Ellison, who was born and raised in Jim Crow Louisiana, was a social worker who encouraged her boys to also be politically active. After graduating from Wayne State University, where he converted to Islam, Ellison went to the University of Minnesota Law School. He candidly admits he took pleasure there in “shaking people out of their zone of comfort” and sometimes said and did things for their “shock value,” such as writing what some considered racially inflammatory columns for the Minnesota Daily under the pseudonym of “Keith Hakim.”
Ellison has a number of things going for him, starting with the most obvious—he is the endorsed candidate in a primary election. He sits very comfortably at the same spot on the political spectrum as most of the DFL party faithful who are most likely to turn out and vote in a primary. And, by virtually all accounts, he was a conscientious state legislator. Beyond that, he is the only non-white candidate facing three other Democrats who are political and demographic clones of one another. In essence, they are fighting over the same pool of chardonnay-and-Brie white liberals. This is a state that loves “firsts” and “onlys”—therefore, the chance to send Minnesota’s first African-American to Congress, where he will be the only Muslim, is something to die for in this recognition-starved state. Face it—since Paul Wellstone’s death, has any Minnesota politician really made a national splash for anything other than bad-mouthing Kofi Annan or shutting down his office in reaction to an anthrax scare?
And yet, if I were Ellison, I would be a tad concerned about the underwhelming response from the African-American political community. I spoke with a number of well-connected black politicians who said that Ellison has to do some fence mending “right quick” to ensure a strong black turnout. Former Fifth Ward City Council Member Natalie Johnson-Lee had this to say about Ellison. “Keith is a smart, driven, very ambitious, bordering-on-arrogant kind of guy. Many in the African-American community who actually turn up to vote will likely vote for him. But—and this is key—how hard those same individuals are willing to campaign for him and how deep they are willing to dig into their pockets to support him financially … that’s another question. I wish him the best.”
Between now and primary day, Ellison must do these three things: convince the Lake of the Isles-Lake Calhoun-Linden Hills crowd that he is a person of integrity who does not see himself above the law; re-energize black people about his candidacy; and make sure that the delegates who showed him the love in May do not get a case of buyer’s remorse in September. If he does, he should win by a comfortable margin. However, those three factors will not mean squat if there are any more credible allegations about Ellison. Should any more bad news about Ellison surface—particularly if it comes from anybody but Ellison himself—then stick a fork in him, because he will be done, and rightfully so.
Clinton Collins, Jr. is a Minneapolis lawyer and ABC Radio commentator. You can reach him at ccollins at collinslawfirm dot com.
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