The alleged accusation weighs on the candidacy of Keith Ellison's Attorney General

PLYMOUTH, Minnesota – Minnesota, known for its picturesque lakes and friendly people, has been in the spotlight over the past year for being at the center of the Me Too movement.

He lost two lawmakers and a popular US senator amid allegations of sexual misconduct. More recently, a state legislator, whose 23-year-old daughter accused her of having touched her, improperly announced that he would not run for re-election.

But of all the scandals, the most important that emerges after the midterm elections is an allegation of domestic violence against Keith Ellison, 55, a member of the Democratic Congress and a six-term candidate who presents himself as Attorney General. Not only does this shock the Republicans, but it worries some Democrats who would normally vote for Ellison.

His loss would put the Attorney General's office out of the control of the Democratic Party for the first time since 1971 and would deprive the state of a liberal advocate dedicated to fighting the radical policies of the Trump government in matters of democracy. immigration and health care.

Moreover, if the scandal thwarts Ellison's candidacy for a position across the country, he will likely have put an end to the rise of one of the most prominent stars of the militant left.

His defeat would be a "major blow," said Kathryn Pearson, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. "I do not know if he's recovering."

In August, Ellison's ex-girlfriend, Karen Monahan, accused him of emotionally abusive behavior, calling it "narcissistic abuse," a term that has become popular online but has not been recognized by professional psychiatry.

The most powerful allegation of Monahan is that Ellison tried to drag her out of bed while shouting insults in August 2016. Monahan's son, Austin, had revealed the l? charge for the first time in a Facebook post three days before the August 14 primary and had tagged several of Ellison's main opponents. . Ellison, however, easily won the appointment of the Attorney General of the Democratic-Peasant-Labor Party, or DFL, as the Democratic Party of the State calls it.

Monahan and his son both referred to a video of the event that Monahan had filmed on his phone. But Monahan, who shared many SMS and some of her medical records with the public, refused to broadcast the video to the media or to Susan Ellingstad, the lawyer that the DFL had hired to investigate the charges.

Ellingstad cited Monahan's refusal to share the video, as well as her changing justifications for not wanting to share it, in a 15-page report published Monday, concluding that the allegation of physical altercation was "unsubstantiated."

A group of elderly Republican activists from the affluent Plymouth suburbs listened with sustained attention late on Thursday as Doug Wardlow, 40, GOP Attorney General's candidate for the Minnesota Attorney General, presented his usual speech on the pursuit of social assistance fraud, the so-called problem of "illegal". vote and enforce immigration laws.

But nothing attracted the audience so much as when he sued Ellison, saying there should be a criminal investigation into the behavior of the congressman.

"We have the opportunity to remove once and for all Keith Ellison from politics in Minnesota," he said, prompting loud applause as he headed for the attack two-thirds of his speech.

"Let me tell you a bit about my opponent," he continued.

"Her friends do it for you!" A woman in the crowd, impassive.

After Wardlow's intervention, evening host Linda Stageberg, who chairs the local chapter of the National Federation of Republican Women, warned the crowd that if Ellison had won, she and her husband intended to "move to Wisconsin".

Although Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump's candidate for the Supreme Court, was charged with attempted rape, Stageberg saw no contradiction in seeking Kavanaugh's confirmation – even though she had tried to convince Ellison.

"Many of us prayed for Justice Kavanaugh to be named. And I would like to add Doug to our prayer list, "she told participants.

One of the foundations of Ellison's attacks remains Islamophobic suggestions regarding his Muslim religion. Wardlow explained in detail how a daycare run by Americans of Somali origin had defrauded the state welfare agency and hinted that the money could have been used to fund the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabab.

In an interview, Wardlow denied attempting to insinuate anything about Ellison's Islamic religion. "I think he's going to be distracted by his political agenda," he said.

Stageberg told HuffPost of fears over the lack of integration of some Somali immigrants in the metropolitan area. She thinks Ellison will not fight for this integration.

"He was born a Catholic," Stageberg said, referring obliquely to his conversion to Islam as a young adult. "He does not seem to want to fight for the United States and Minnesota."

Wardlow has also skillfully fanned Ellison's old fears as a black radical. First digital video of his campaign, "The choice," Ellison claims to have "supported the cop killers" and presents an enlarged picture of Ellison looking angry as well as seemingly unrelated images of teenage protesters burning an American flag.

Ellison would be the second elected black Minnesota. (The first was Alan Page, retired Supreme Court Justice.)

A progressive Minnesota woman who knew both Ellison and Monahan, but declined to name him because Ellison does not want people to criticize Monahan on his behalf, think Monahan falsely accuses Ellison. She fears that Monahan will know that the charges against Ellison will remain unchanged because he is black.

"It's an entirely white state," said the Progressive Minnesota woman. "He's a black man. They will not believe it. "

But it's not just the hard-fought Republicans gathered in Plymouth – the voters Ellison could never hope to win – who seem to be influenced by the charges against him. Some trustworthy Democratic voters, who spoke to HuffPost before the Ellingstad report was published, did not want to vote for him.

"I'm not comfortable, and if it happens on November 6 and I'm still not comfortable with him, I will not vote for him," said a woman in a suburb of Twin Cities who asked to remember his name for fear of jeopardizing his future in democratic activism.

Tara Engebretson, a real estate agency in Wayzata, was a fan of Ellison before the allegation, but now she needs more information to vote for him.

"Especially with the way Kavanaugh tackles the problem, we can not continue to let him slip under the rug," said Engebretson, who plans to vote for other registered Democratic candidates.

A third woman active in Minnesota's democratic politics, who also retained her name because of professional concerns, is considering voting for Ellison. She then wishes that he resign in order to allow the holding of special elections.

"Minnesota needs the democrat to win. I would like the Democrat not to be Keith Ellison, "she said.

Allegations of domestic violence threaten to have a significant impact on the race. In a poll in mid-September, Ellison was ahead of Wardlow with just 5 percentage points, almost within the margin of error. nearly one in five voters said they were undecided. Noah Johnson, a Cannabis candidate for legalization, received 5 per cent support – enough to secure him a place in the September 21 TV debate.

In contrast, US representative Tim Walz (D) led Republican Jeff Johnson to the governorship race with 9 percentage points with a smaller pool of indecisive players.

The charges against Ellison "made this race very competitive, like a run," said Pearson. "Without the scandal, it would not be competitive."

Shortly after the release of the charges against Ellison, the LDF commissioned an investigation into Ellingstad, a lawyer at Lockridge Grindal Nauen in Minneapolis.

For its part, Ellison categorically denied the allegations from the start. He also refused to try to discredit Monahan, saying in mid-August: "I always care deeply about his well-being."

But as the DFL investigation lasted for more than a month, it became clear that the issue does not go away.

The allegation is at the heart of the video of Wardlow's campaign, "The choice," who received 8,000 more views on Twitter than The optimistic video of Ellison a few days later.

"Extreme Keith Ellison has been accused of domestic violence by several women. Even the National Women's Organization has called for Ellison to end his campaign, "says the narrator of the ad. On screen, an image of Ellison handcuffed during an arrest for civil disobedience at a gradual gathering appears on the screen.

NOW and UltraViolet, a group of women online, both Ellison called to withdraw of the race before the primary. No other women's organization or progressive group has called on him to withdraw. None of Ellison's colleagues in Congress has either.

Wardlow's video refers to a previous allegation against Ellison when she applied to the Congress for the first time in 2005 and 2006. Amy Alexander, a woman dissatisfied with not finding a job in a group to which Ellison was related, claimed to have had an extramarital affair with him and stated that He then grabbed her and threatened her. Ellison denied it, accused him of attempted extortion and obtained a two-year prohibition order against him. She tried to get a restraining order against him, but a judge refused to grant it.

The Conservatives have managed to keep the story of Monahan's most recent allegations in the local press. In mid-September, the site on the right Alpha News continued undo Ellison's divorce papers to his ex-wife Kim; last Tuesday, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune followed suit.

Sensing that the story was getting out of hand, Ellison invited the House Ethics Committee to launch his own investigation into the charges on Wednesday.

When Ellingstad finally released its findings Monday, Ellison said he was ready to go ahead. "At this point, I will focus on the stakes of this election," he said in a statement.

But the Conservatives had already worked hard to sow doubt about the independence of the report. The DFL did not do any favors to Ellison in this regard, as he relied on a company whose main associates had represented the party in partisan affairs.

Wardlow called the survey "dummy". Alpha News continues to report the proverbial controversy with a report Tuesday on the contributions of the company's employees to the DFL; Fox News has a similar story.

Even some Democrats believe that the investigation is inadequate. Walz, the DFL's governorship candidate, told HuffPost that critics highlighting this conflict of interest presented a "fair critique" of the investigation.

Mark Stone, Democrat and Engineer at Becker, said he would have preferred a third party investigation and that he still needed more information before he could feel at home. comfortable to vote for Ellison.

"I'm expecting Democrats to stand by the same standards as Republicans [to] and that it is not just a rationalization to meet their needs, "he said.

Monahan has her own potential conflict of interest. She hired Andrew Parker, the right-wing expert and partner of Parker Rosen of Minneapolis, as her attorney and spokesperson in matters related to the allegation against Ellison.

Parker had previously employed Ellison's opponent, Doug Wardlow, in his cabinet and defended Wardlow's ability to separate his personal opinions from his legal practice in an article published Saturday in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Parker acknowledged to HuffPost that he supported Wardlow's candidacy on a personal basis, but denied that Monahan had any contact with Wardlow's campaign, either directly or through him.

"I never talked to Doug Wardlow about my performance until he learned it from the press," Parker said.

In an interview with The Intercept in which he had made similar denials, Parker refused to say he blamed Monahan for his services. Parker also explained why he had not seen Monahan's video yet during a radio interview on Tuesday night. He first said that he had not met her in person yet; he then stated that she had not brought her to their first meeting and that she had since been out of the city.

HuffPost has been keeping up with some 20 Democrats and electors hanging in the Greater Twin Cities metropolitan area and in the Northland area.

Even before the release of the report, the vast majority of voters did not know who Ellison was and simply planned to vote for the entire DFL ticket, or considered the details of the incident alleged to be obscure enough that they would nevertheless vote for him unless more incriminating information emerged.

"I do not like the charges against him, but I like that he's asking for an investigation," Shorewood resident Anne Kohler said, citing Ellison's call for an ethics committee investigation. of the House.

Wardlow, famous for his work with the anti-LGBT group of the Alliance for the Defense of Freedom, is a powerful motivator for many of these voters.

"I'm talking to the people who are going to be the hardest hit by a Republican in this role," said Tammy Clore, owner of a small business in Duluth, who went door-to-door for the Democratic congressional candidate , Joe Radinovich. "My friends of color are really upset that anyone would consider not voting for [Ellison]. "

Part of the reason voters are willing to hear Ellison because of what happened with Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.), Who quickly resigned under the strong pressure of his fellow Democrats after being accused of multiple trial and error. Many Democrats in Minnesota think that he was forced to leave the post and should have stayed until an investigation was opened.

This includes Clore, who is called "Franken Progressive" and keeps a copy of Al Franken, Giant of the Senate on a shelf in his house next to the post-election volume of Hillary Clinton, What happened.

Clore wishes that there was an independent investigation into Franken before the Democrats pressured him to quit. "He was eviscerated by our own party," she said.

The national Republicans have tried a little to give Ellison a weight on the neck of other Democratic candidates. The US Congressional Fund for Leadership, a super PAC linked to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Criticized Democrat candidate Joe Radinovich in Minnesota's 8th congressional district for failing to meet his demands. to be "ready" to Ellison in an advertisement in August, instead of asking him to withdraw from the race. The CLF quickly stopped broadcasting the announcement, preferring to focus on speed violations and marijuana citation by the Democrats.

Maddie Anderson, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congress Committee, has called on candidates in the House of Democrats in the state to denounce Ellison and say they are considering voting for him. But the independent NRCC spending arm, which is overflowing with ads against Minnesota Democrats, has not made Ellison a theme.

"It would not be a surprise to me if they did it in the future," said Anderson.

During the four and a half days of a dozen campaign events across the state, however, there was no indication that Ellison's luggage was hurting other Democratic candidates.

"I'm outside [on the trail] everyday. And I can count on my fingers the number of times voters have mentioned it, "said Dean Phillips, Democratic candidate in Minnesota, a Democrat from the suburbs in the district who hopes to overturn. "The only people who do it are reporters and trolls on the Internet."

That did not stop the Democrats from worrying about it.

Their concerns are manifested as a form of crisis management very Minnesotian: avoid definitive statements or confrontation at any price and hope that the problem will disappear. Virtually no one would dismiss the allegations against Ellison, although many did so privately. At the same time, hardly anyone would give up his candidacy or explode it explicitly.

Instead, they tended to leave it to the investigation. And yet, since the publication of the survey, none of the state's most prominent Democrats have publicly praised this investigation as an exemption from Ellison. LDF President Ken Martin has simply stated that the party would submit its report to law enforcement, which could decide whether to approve the charges or not.

The DFL asked the Minneapolis police to investigate Ellison on Wednesday, but the police refused, citing a conflict of interest. Ellison's son, Jeremiah, is a member of the Minneapolis City Council.

The prolonged drama of the allegation and subsequent investigation appears to be affecting Ellison's political strategy. A Congressman from Minnesota said Wednesday in a radio interview that he was planning to step down as vice president of the Democratic National Committee. "I have to dedicate 100% of my time, energy and resources to the race and to my office, so that's something I envision," Ellison told WCCO Minneapolis. He had previously stated that he would remain in office when he was elected Attorney General.

During HuffPost's visit, the DFL made it clear that it wanted to limit the scope of any story about the allegations. The DFL, which did not respond to HuffPost's inquiries regarding the timing of the investigation in the days leading up to its release, asked a campaign staff member to assure HuffPost that HuffPost would not request Voters from the 8th Congressional District give their opinion on Ellison.

When HuffPost asked several women at a hurry to summon Democrats from the state chamber to give their opinion on Ellison, Patty Acomb, Democrat candidate for the House of Commons. state, took a giant step backwards to avoid being questioned about it.

Democratic governor Mark Dayton, who spoke at the campaign kickoff, also visibly whitened when asked about Ellison.

"I am a state government. I'm not involved "in Ellison's race, he said.

Minnesota House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman, whose relationship with Ellison dates back to her early days as head of the Minneapolis Legal Rights Center for low-income residents, offered the most comprehensive endorsement to his candidacy among the Democrats of Minnesota.

"Keith Ellison is a long time friend and a fantastic democrat and he will be an outstanding Attorney General," she said. But she also deferred to the DFL investigation when he acted on questions about the allegations against him.

The party did not completely hide Ellison. He was the guest speaker at a DFL launch event in North Minneapolis on Saturday; Later that day, he spoke at Hinckley at the party's annual Jim Oberstar Memorial Dinner.

For the most part, however, Democratic candidates who eagerly welcome Walz or Senator Amy Klobuchar to campaign with them are eager to ignore Ellison. Unlike other candidates from across the country, Ellison did not appear in the DFL campaign literature for Radinovich that Clore had distributed at the gates. Ellison was also visibly missing in front of Duluth's DFL office, where signs for Klobuchar, Smith, and Walz were clearly visible above a homemade sign that said, "We believe #MeToo survivors."

Clore, who was wearing a Radinovich t-shirt, wore pins for all state candidates, with the exception of Ellison. And the DFL candidate for the position of Attorney General was notably absent from the lawns of Democrats in the Duluth district of Congdon, which was full of placards for other Democratic candidates.

One of the houses featured a 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign sign as well as signs for Klobuchar, Walz, Smith, Radinovich and State House candidate Jen Schultz. Ellison, the only member of the House to approve Sanders' candidacy for the presidency, was not found.

The biggest craze for Ellison came on Monday when former President Barack Obama announced the appointment of 17 Minnesota candidates from the governor to Congress, via the state. Ellison was not among them.

Phillips, a businessman challenging Republican Representative Erik Paulsen, said he had not yet decided to vote for Ellison, although he said he was "totally" at odds with Wardlow's values. .

"If the allegations are true in Mr. Ellison's case, they are disqualifying," Phillips said.

Although candidates for the position of Attorney General often run as joint nominees for candidates for governor and lieutenant governor positions, Mr. Walz stated that he had not yet intended to campaign with Ellison.

"We will wait to see what comes out," Walz said alongside teammate Peggy Flanagan. He clarified that the DFL investigation would not suffice him; he wants to see the results of the potential investigation of the House Ethics Committee.

At the same time, Walz praised Ellison as an "expert legislator" and pointed out that the Kavanaugh case was different.

Unlike the Supreme Court candidate, he concluded, "the people of Minnesota will have their say and their right to vote".

Some of Ellison's allies fear privately that his relatively cautious approach to overturning Monahan's claims is a mistake. Even though he denies the allegations, Ellison refuses to call her a "liar".

Ellison stands at his approach.

"I'm working as hard as I can to win this election," Ellison told HuffPost with a sigh. "But if it does not work properly, I want to at least feel good about who I am."