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AMP Report – Sept. 13, 2006
Ellison may become the first Muslim in US congress
Minnesota State lawmaker Keith Ellison has won primary election in a safe Democratic Party district. If he wins in the November 7 mid term elections, Ellison will become the first Muslim in the US congress.
Tuesday (9/12/2006), voters responded to his liberal message calling for peace, withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and universal health care. He beat three contenders in the Democratic primary in a Minneapolis-area district long dominated by his party.
The American Muslim Task Force, an umbrella organization of American Muslims, called it a huge victory for both Muslim Americans and America. An AMT statement said: “This victory has eradicated two stereotypes: one against Muslims, that cannot they work and succeed in democratic setup and the other against the United States, that it is not a tolerant society.”
The Newsweek reported recently that America's estimated five to seven million Muslims are nearly invisible when it comes to holding office. Currently, the highest-ranking Muslim public official is Larry Shaw, a North Carolina state senator. In 2004, Ferial Masry, a Saudi-born woman lost her bid for congress in California. Also from California, Syed Rifat Mahmood made an unsuccessful bid for congress in 2002 on a Republican ticket.
Among Muslims, Ellison's campaign has generated excitement. "There are millions of Muslims in this country. It shouldn't have taken this long to elect one to Congress," said Nimco Ahmed, 24, a Somali immigrant and political organizer.
Nihad Awad, executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, flew to Minneapolis for an Aug. 25 fundraiser for Ellison, who has collected about $400,000, mostly from individual contributors in his district. Awad said that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have both heightened prejudice against Muslims and spurred Muslims to be more politically active in hopes of countering that prejudice.
Somali voters - many voting for the first time - appeared energized by Ellison's candidacy. Election official Hashi Abdi said he had to tell several people to leave their Ellison signs outside the polling area. "A lot of the Muslim community have a lot of sympathy for this guy," Abdi said.
Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale backed Ellison as did influential Wellstone friends, Sam and Sylvia Kaplan, who hosted a well-attended fund-raiser for him. "He's come a long way. He's kept himself under control while the attacks have been relentless," Sam Kaplan said from the Blue Nile on Franklin Avenue where Ellison had his victory party.
Ellison's victory ended a hard-fought primary contest considered too close to call even as the results began to come in Tuesday night. In the end, it turned into a three-way contest and Ellison received more than 41 percent of the vote, a stronger finish than observers forecast. He now faces opponents from the Republican, Independence and Green parties.
The 43-year-old Detroit native is in position to become the first black person elected to Congress from Minnesota. Ellison almost never talked about race or religion during the campaign unless asked, but he referred to it when he talked with supporters after the victory.
"We brought together all ages, all colors, all faiths," he said.
"Let's be honest, we faced some tough days, but we never got negative," Ellison continued. "And we proved that you can win an election by going positive and staying positive. We know that negative campaigning has its effects, but it doesn't enhance our humanity, it does not build bridges, it builds walls."
Ellison is a two-term legislator from north Minneapolis who won the party endorsement in May. Tuesday he beat back primary challenges from former state Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Mike Erlandson, Sabo's longtime chief of staff and his choice of successor, and former state Sen. Ember Reichgott Junge, who made health care her central issue, and Minneapolis City Council Member Paul Ostrow. Erlandson ran second with 31 percent of the vote; Reichgott Junge ran third with 21 percent.
To make history, Ellison still must win in November, but the Fifth District leans hard to the left. That makes him the favorite against Republican Alan Fine, Independence candidate Tammy Lee and Green Party member Jay Pond in November. Pond has challenged Sabo in the past with minimal success.
When Sabo announced his retirement in March, the ranks of DFLers seeking to succeed him swelled. Ellison stunned the DFL Party convention crowd by winning swiftly. The party's backing should have made him a strong favorite in the primary in a district that includes Minneapolis and inner-ring suburbs.
But Ellison found himself facing questions about his ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in the 1990s, in part because of his work helping organize the Million Man March.
Despite Ellison's desire to focus on the war and the economy, questions about his faith and character have kept him on the defensive.
The most damaging accusations, says Christopher Gilbert, professor of political science at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., concern Ellison's past associations with the Nation of Islam and its leader, Louis Farrakhan.
Nation of Islam
Within days, Michael Brodkorb, author of a Republican blog called MinnesotaDemocratsExposed.com, dug up two articles that Ellison had written under the name of Keith Hakim for the University of Minnesota student newspaper when he was in law school there in 1989 and 1990.
The first article defended Farrakhan against accusations of anti-Semitism. The second called affirmative action a "sneaky" form of compensation for slavery, suggesting instead that white Americans pay reparations to blacks.
Another conservative blog, PowerLineBlog.com, subsequently revealed that the candidate had used the names Keith X Ellison and Keith Ellison-Muhammed during his student days. In more than 20 Web postings titled "Who Is Keith Ellison?" PowerLine asserted that he had been a "local leader" of the Nation of Islam and accused him of "involvement" in anti-Semitism.
Badly stung, Ellison responded quickly. He met privately with key Jewish supporters, spoke publicly at a synagogue in the suburb of St. Louis Park and repudiated Farrakhan in a May 28 letter to the Jewish Community Relations Council in Minneapolis.
While denying that he had ever joined -- much less led -- the Nation of Islam, he acknowledged that he had worked with the group for about 18 months to organize the Minnesota contingent to Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March in Washington.
In the letter to the council, he apologized for failing to "adequately scrutinize the positions" of Farrakhan and other Nation of Islam leaders. "They were and are anti-Semitic, and I should have come to that conclusion earlier than I did."
Jewish endorsement
In interviews on the campaign trail, Ellison said his attraction to Islam in the 1980s "had a political angle to it, a reaction against status quo politics."
But he said he has stayed a Muslim, and grown in his faith, while his political outlook has moderated since he began practicing law, serving in the state legislature and raising four children with his wife, Kim, a high school math teacher who has multiple sclerosis.
When he was one of three blacks among 265 members of the University of Minnesota Law School's class of 1990, he said, "my perspective was a tunnel vision; I was mostly concerned about the welfare of the African American community."
"That was the era of [Spike Lee's film] 'Do the Right Thing,' " he continued. "Remember that? People had their black, yellow and red kufi caps on. There was higher African American consciousness. . . ."
Even in those days, Ellison added, "I never said anything that was anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic in any way." But, he said, he was slow to judge those who did.
"I chalked it up to typical mainstream press attacking African American leadership," he said. "When you're African American, there's literally no leader who is not beat up by the press. . . .
"The change of heart I had is, I did start to look more closely, and I feel that African Americans, having been victims of slavery and Jim Crow, can never justify doing the same thing to anyone else; wrong is wrong everywhere," he said.
Based on such assurances, Jewish Democratic activists rallied around Ellison. Samuel and Sylvia Kaplan, a Minneapolis couple who are influential fundraisers, said he reminds them of the late senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.). Phyllis Kahn, a fellow Democrat in the state legislature, said it is "inconceivable that he could have ever been an anti-Semite."
Mordecai Specktor, editor and publisher of the American Jewish World, Minnesota's Jewish weekly, strongly endorsed Ellison in a Sept. 1 editorial. "His association with the Million Man March -- there are some people in the Jewish community who cannot forgive him for that," Specktor said. "I decided that he had a sincere change of heart and mind."
Ellison embraced Islam as a college student
Ellison, a 43-year-old criminal defense lawyer, embraced Islam at the age of 19 when he was a student at Wayne State University in Detroit. Keith Ellison says he became interested in Islam after reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," but that there was no "epiphany" that led him to the faith. "I just started studying it and found it interesting and here I am," he said. "I lead my life in a way to not make religion a big deal."
Ellison and his wife, Kim, have four children. They moved to the Twin Cities so he could attend the University of Minnesota's law school. He was raised Catholic and comfortably middle-class, one of four sons. He converted to Islam while at Wayne State University. In adherence to Muslim law, Ellison doesn't drink alcohol or eat pork. His wife isn't a Muslim, but the couple is raising their children in the faith. He attends the Masjid An-Nur mosque led by North Side native, Makram El-Amin.
Ellison, 43, is a two-term state legislator. He prays five times a day and says he has not eaten pork or had a drink of alcohol since he converted to Islam as a 19-year-old student at Wayne State University in Detroit. When speaking at mosques or to members of Minneapolis's large Somali immigrant population, he opens with "Salaam aleikum," Arabic for "Peace be with you."
When asked about his religion on the campaign trail, he said: "I'm a Muslim. I'm proud to be a Muslim. But I'm not running as a Muslim candidate," Ellison said during a break between a commemoration of Hurricane Katrina and an appearance at a public housing project. "I'm running as a candidate who believes in peace and bringing the troops out of Iraq now. I'm running as a candidate who believes in universal, single-payer health care coverage and an increase in the minimum wage." (Source New York Times/Washington Post/ Star Tribune-Minnesota and other media reports)
Christian Science Monitor – Sept. 25, 2006
Contender may become first Muslim in us congress
By Amanda Paulson
When Keith Ellison arrives at the Karmel Square, one of Minneapolis's Somali malls, a rock star might as well be walking by the bustling stalls of bright fabrics, jewelry, phone cards, and videos.
People laugh and cheer as they hug Mr. Ellison and pat him on the back. Some speak quickly in Somali as an interpreter translates, and others offer congratulations in fluent English.
"Asalamu aleikum, brothers," Ellison says with a smile. "Thanks for voting." He is not Somali, or even an immigrant, but for these voters, Ellison is one of their own. After his victory in this month's Democratic primary in the Fifth District, he's likely to become the first Muslim elected to Congress. He would also be the first black congressman to come from Minnesota.
The distinctions are ones Ellison tries to downplay, always directing conversation back to the issues, but national media and many Minnesotans want to talk of little else.
"You think of the stereotype of Minnesota - Garrison Keillor and white Norwegian farmers. The first Muslim congressman coming from Minnesota? It says a lot about the changing face of the United States and Minnesota," says Larry Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance. "I think it's one of the most interesting races in the country." . . .
Muslims, both in Minneapolis and around the country, are quick to cheer his success as well.
"It sends two very positive messages," says Corey Saylor, national legislative director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group in Washington. "It sends a message about the American people, that five years after 9/11 they're comfortable sending an American to Congress, on issues not based on faith. And for the American Muslim community, it says our community has grown in political inclusion to the point where we can get someone elected to higher office." ……
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0925/p01s02-uspo.html
New York Times – Oct. 8, 2006
Democrat poised to become first Muslim in congress
BY NEIL MacFARQUHAR
MINNEAPOLIS - Keith Ellison, the Democratic candidate for Congress here, strode among the stalls of exotically printed fabric, telephone cards and sweet tea at a Somali mall, shaking hands with his fellow Muslims.
"The community showed up big!" Mr. Ellison, 43, said, dispensing hugs as he thanked the many immigrant Somalis whose votes had helped him beat six other candidates in a primary race in September.
Mr. Ellison, a stocky criminal defense lawyer who converted to Islam in college, is expected by experts to make history on Election Day by becoming the first Muslim elected to Congress, as well as the first black representative from Minnesota.
"If he wins, he will take the oath of office on a Koran," Ali Ahmed, a social services worker, said as he wandered through the Karmel Square mall, a popular shopping and social destination for Somali immigrants.
"Our main concern is that Muslims are treated differently from Christians," Mr. Ahmed said. "So he can show that we are all the same people."
The Fifth Congressional District is a Democratic citadel. The last Republican to represent it lost re-election in 1962.
Mr. Ellison's Republican opponent, Alan Fine, has made a concerted effort to discredit him for previous ties to the Nation of Islam, the radical group founded by Louis Farrakhan, but experts do not expect Mr. Fine to pose a serious challenge.
Though Mr. Ellison usually mentions his faith on the campaign trail only when asked, his candidacy has amounted to something of a political awakening among Muslims tired of being vilified since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"They were resistant to voting because a lot of them thought it wouldn't make a difference," said Abdisalam Adam, the director of a Somali cultural center who helped send scores of volunteers door to door to bring out voters in the primary. "This is the first time we saw people get excited and identify with the issues."…..
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/us/politics/08muslim.html
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