Keith Ellison

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Keith Ellison

Keith Maurice Ellison (born on 4. August 1963 in Detroit , Michigan ) is an American politician of the Democratic Party . He has been Attorney General of the state of Minnesota since 2019 , for which he represented part of the metropolitan area of ​​Minneapolis in the United States House of Representatives from 2007 to 2019 . In 2017-18, Ellison was vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee .

Family, education and work

Keith Ellison speaks at Patrick Henry High School, Minneapolis (September 2006)

The African American Ellison grew up with four siblings in Detroit and was raised Roman Catholic . He converted to Islam at the age of 19 . In 1987 he married Kim Ellison and moved to Minneapolis to graduate from the University of Minnesota with a law degree in 1990 . Ellison has four children with divorced wife Kim.

He worked for the racist and anti-Semitic Nation of Islam , for which he wrote various columns under the name Keith E. Hakim in the student newspaper Minnesota Daily . This was criticized when he became a politician.

politics

Ellison is a member of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party . In 2002 he was elected to the House of Representatives of Minnesota in the heavily minority-dominated constituency 58B in Minneapolis .

In the 2006 election to the United States House of Representatives , he prevailed in Minnesota's 5th congressional electoral district with 56 percent of the vote and around 35 percent ahead of Republican Alan Fine. Ellison took the place of outgoing MP Martin Olav Sabo in the 110th Congress of the United States on January 3, 2007 . He was the first Muslim MP in Congress and was the first MP to take his oath of office on the Koran . It was a 1764 edition of the translation of the Koran by George Sale , which Thomas Jefferson had sold to the Library of Congress in 1815 .

In the House of Representatives, Ellison was a member of the Financial Services Committee , the Foreign Affairs and Legal Committees , among others . In the 2008 election , Ellison was reelected by a large margin. He came to 70.8 percent of the votes, the Republican rival Barb Davis White 22 percent, the independent candidate Bill McGaughey 6.9 percent. Ellison was re-elected in all subsequent elections, most recently in 2016 , and always received over two-thirds of the votes cast.

In February 2017, Ellison ran for the vacant chairmanship of the federal party's organization, the Democratic National Committee , at the Democratic Congress . In the runoff election he was defeated by Tom Perez , who appointed him his deputy. Ellison resigned from office on November 8, 2018.

In June 2018, Ellison announced that he was running for the November 2018 election as Attorney General for the state of Minnesota instead of running for re-election in the House of Representatives. His previous congressional mandate was won by the Democrat Ilhan Omar , who came to the United States as a twelve-year-old refugee from Somalia . His ex-girlfriend accused Ellison in August 2018 of abusing her, which Ellison denied. Several media companies sued against his will to view his divorce papers, which were published in mid-October 2018. There was no evidence of any previous violence by Ellison.

Despite the allegations, Ellison won the November 2018 Attorney General election against Republican Doug Wardlow. He resigned from Congress on January 3, 2019 and took office on January 7, 2019.

Positions

Ellison is considered a prominent voice of the left within the Democratic Party ( progressivism ). In the 2016 Democratic presidential primary election , he stood up for left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders , who ultimately lost to establishment favorite Hillary Clinton . Ellison rejected the Iraq war .

Web links

Commons : Keith Ellison  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Campaign 2006: Keith Ellison. In: Minnesota Public Radio , 2006.
  2. ↑ Thomas Jefferson's Copy of the Koran To Be Used in Congressional Swearing-in Ceremony. In: Library of Congress , January 3, 2007.
  3. ↑ Ellison, Keith M. In: Our Campaigns.
  4. ^ Gabriel Debenedetti: Perez elected DNC chairman. In: Politico , February 25, 2017.
  5. ^ Jessie Van Berkel: Ellison joins AG race, DFL hopefuls line up to replace him in Congress. In: The Star Tribune , June 5, 2018; Emily Witt: How Ilhan Omar Won Over Hearts in Minnesota's Fifth. In: The New Yorker , August 15, 2018.
  6. ↑ Ellison denies abuse allegations from ex-girlfriend. In: Associated Press , August 12, 2018.
  7. ↑ Kyle Potter, Steve Karnowski: In unsealed divorce filings, Rep. Keith Ellison says ex-wife abused him. In: Twincities.com , October 17, 2018.
  8. ↑ Stephen Montemayor: Keith Ellison defeats Doug Wardlow in Minnesota attorney general race. In: The Star Tribune , November 7, 2018.
  9. ↑ Ben Jacobs: 'I'm not climbing a career ladder': why Keith Ellison is leaving Congress. In: The Guardian , July 8, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Ellison, Keith
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ellison, Keith Maurice; Hakim, Keith E. (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit , Michigan