(Pioneer Press) For more than a decade, Keith Ellison’s political opponents have criticized him with the same list of grievances:
His past association with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, his past association with gang leader Sharif Willis, his past statements on domestic terrorist Sara Jane Olson, his past statements on convicted cop killer Assata Shakur, and a suggestion that Ellison, who is Muslim, would somehow “impose sharia law.”
This year is no different, as Ellison, a Democratic congressman from Minneapolis, runs for state attorney general. The grievances are being aired once again. Some are being made publicly by his opponent, Republican former state lawmaker Doug Wardlow, while others are being made by individuals acting on their own.
Ellison and his supporters see it all as basically a campaign of smears, tinged with racist and Islamophobic undertones.
