This essay is part of Beyond the battlegrounds, a special opinion series from MS NOW that digs into a number of lesser-known elections to watch, which will each nonetheless impact the national balance of power in important ways.
In 2018, Keith Ellison, then the member of Congress representing Minneapolis and some of its suburbs, was elected Minnesota attorney general, becoming the first Muslim elected to statewide office in the history of the United States of America.
It’s worth pausing to reckon with that fact. No Muslim won statewide office in the first 242 years of the U.S. (if we’re counting from 1776). He won in a majority white and Christian state, and was re-elected in 2022. Whatever happens next, he has made an indelible mark on history.
This election is breaking new, ugly ground in the ongoing story of anti-Muslim bigotry against elected officials and candidates.
But I am concerned about what happens next. Ellison has been a competent attorney general who has used his office to protect Minnesotans from both corporate malfeasance and the federal government. If he wins, that continues. If he loses, Minnesotans will no longer have a badly needed bulwark against a president that increasingly seems obsessed with punishing them for daring to defy him. And for the first time, Ellison is facing a competent opponent in an election caught between at least two major stories, each pulling the electorate in opposite directions. Republicans are running on blaming Democrats for widespread fraud in social services programs. Democrats are running on blaming Republicans for the occupation of our state and the murder of our people (not to mention high prices on gas, groceries and healthcare).
I know which side is more compelling to me, but I’m not totally confident that my state electorate will make the right choice. Across the nation, this election is breaking new, ugly ground in the ongoing story of anti-Muslim bigotry against elected officials and candidates, a story that arguably begins, at least in this century, with Keith Ellison.
Ellison was elected to the Minnesota House in 2002, then Congress in 2006. He was the first Muslim elected to Congress, which is historic, of course, but it’s a lot easier to break new ground by winning one of the most progressive districts in the country than by succeeding statewide.
The unhinged racism and Islamophobia that greeted his election turned out to be a harbinger of the intensified bigotry that is now so fundamental to mainstream Republican discourse. In the days after his election in 2006, Glenn Beck, then a CNN pundit, told Ellison, “Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.” Dennis Prager, now a principal architect of right-wing attempts to rewrite American history, condemned Ellison for choosing to swear his oath on a Quran instead of a Bible, saying that if he were allowed to use his own holy book, “he will be doing more damage to the unity of America and to the value system that has formed this country than the terrorists of 9/11.” Ellison famously selected a Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson.
There’s a direct line from these attacks, shameless and confident that outrageous Islamophobia would generate no real penalty to the perpetrator, to what’s happening today. Trump’s attacks on Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar (both verbally and physically, via a Justice Department and Homeland Security raid on her home in Washington) and the whole discourse around “Somali fraud” reflect an escalation of an already bad situation in Minnesota.
Ellison’s opponent, corporate lawyer Ron Schutz, presents as reasonable. In 2018, Ellison faced Doug Wardlow, an architect of homophobic lawsuits and legislation, who ran an explicitly racist campaign that ultimately failed. But in 2018, Sen. Amy Klobuchar was re-elected by a staggering 35 points, and other statewide races went to the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party by about 10 points. Ellison won by only 3 points. In 2022, with Tim Walz cruising to an 8-point victory in the governor’s race, Ellison barely won, 50.37% to 49.53%, narrowly defeating hedge fund lawyer Jim Schultz.
Are we going to be so fortunate a third time, when Minnesota voters have already proved that they’re willing to split the ticket (largely, let’s be clear, because of racism)?
Maybe. Even moderate Minnesotans remain furious with Republicans for the murder of Renée Good and Alex Pretti and the experience of being occupied and terrorized by masked secret police. But that’s no guarantee.
Even moderate Minnesotans remain furious with Republicans for the murder of Renée Good and Alex Pretti and the experience of being occupied and terrorized by masked secret police.
Minnesota is a purple state by number and reputation (at least among some politicos) but not by outcomes. In 1970, Warren Spannaus, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate for Minnesota attorney general, won his election and began a long career fighting for gun control across the state. Our attorneys general tend to hold office for a long time. Skip Humphrey, the son of Hubert Humphrey, held it through the 1980s, followed by two career DFLers, Mike Hatch and Lori Swanson. In 2018, a year widely forecast as a “blue wave” in the backlash to the first Trump presidency, we elected Ellison. So that’s actually more than five decades. In fact, Republicans haven’t won any statewide race since 2006.
For the past eight years, Ellison has been a pretty normal left-wing attorney general. He has focused on corporate fraud, protecting citizens from powerful interests, and has stayed surprisingly out of the news most of the time — with the exceptions, of course, of the prosecution of the cops who killed George Floyd and the ongoing legal response to the occupation.
What we’re about to find out is how a reasonable center-right Republican with a strong issue (fraud) running against a controversial candidate (for all I think the controversies are racist nonsense) does in a wildly anti-Republican context.
In September the race was basically tied. In October, Ellison is up by 8 points with likely voters, but with a big pool of possible voters still undecided. This race will reveal much about the national mood — and whether fury with Republicans can overcome the powerful forces of racism and Islamophobia in America.
The post Could voter frustration outweigh prejudice? Minnesota’s AG race may offer clues. appeared first on MS NOW.
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