III. Keith Ellison
Keith Ellison was a state senator in his when Minnesota Fifth District Democrats nominated him to succeed Martin Sabo in Congress. He had first run unsuccessully for state representative in 1998 as Keith Ellison-Muhammad, a self-proclaimed member and local leader of the Nation of Islam.
The Nation of Islam shtick was not recent development. In law school Ellison had written four columns published in the University of Minnesota Daily under the pseudonym Keith E. Hakim. The columns toed the Nation of Islam line. The Daily covered them in this 2016 story.
Barry Casselman pointed out the columns to me and told me I should take a serious look. I wrote about them in a straightforward manner on Power Line at the time to make out where Ellison was coming from. As Barry suggsted, they were worth the time.
In short order I got a call in my office in downtown Minneapolis asking me whether I would like the caller’s “clip file” on Ellison. My caller — an acquaintance whom I respecedd — required anonymity but offered to give me a copy of his file of press clippings he had compiled on Ellison over the years.
I said I was interested. He asked me to meet him at the corner of 10th and Hennepin, a few blocks from my office. He turned up at the appointed hour and handed over a copy of his file.
Why me? Why Power Line? He told me he had tried to interest the Star Tribune in the clip file (and the underlying story) but couldn’t get a taker. He was frustrated. See Illumination (1).
The clip was full of interesting stuff that became relevant in the Fifth District DFL primary that followed Ellison’s endorsement by the Fifth District convention. It showed Ellison’s long involvement with, and leadership of, the Nation of Islam in town. It also reported his hustling on behalf of the murderers of Minneapolis police officer Jerry Haaf — and with Sharif Willis, their gang leader .
Ellison’s long-time involvement with the Nation of Islam became an issue for Ellison. He wrote a two-page letter to the Jewish Community Relations Council stating that he had only been briefly involved with the Nation, had been unaware of the Nation’s anti-Semitism, and quit when he became aware of it.
The clip file demonstrated each of these statements to be a lie. I wrote about my gleanings from the file repeatedly on Power Line to no substantial effect. Ellison’s lies were easily demonstrable by the public record. I posted several of the documents on Power Line in “Keith Ellison for Dummies.” It didn’t matter.
Incidentally, as I wrote about Ellison that summer, I started getting calls from prominent Democrats with their own Ellison stories. They wre not happy that Ellison was be the face of the Democratic Party in Minneaoplis and its inner-ring suburbs.
I even interviewed the editor who had nominal responsiblity for the columns Ellison had published in the Daily. He told me the Daily had a policy against publishing pseudonymous columns. He was still angry that he had been ordered to override the policy in Ellison’s case.
Now I have my own thick file on Keith Ellison, including his two memoirs. I wrote about them here in a Star Tribune column and here in a City Journal column.
Ellison claims to have converted to Islam in college, but by law school he was clearly under the spell of the Nation of Islam. It usually goes the other way — from the Nation of Islam to Islam. No one has ever asked him how that worked in his case.
Illumination 3 — Being a Muslim Democrat has its privileges.
