(AP) The head of the Democratic Party insisted Wednesday that allegations of domestic abuse against his second-in-command would not hurt his party ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.
Yet four days after the first public accusation of physical and emotional abuse emerged against Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, other would-be allies across the nation were far less certain. And President Donald Trump’s supporters, including a nascent group led by former White House counselor Steve Bannon, are ready to pounce.
Many of the Democratic Party’s most influential figures and outside groups avoided the issue as the political world privately pondered whether Ellison — the deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee who just won his party’s nomination for Minnesota’s attorney general — could survive a prospective scandal in the #MeToo era.
