Keith Ellison and Tim Walz entered Congress together in 2007. They were sworn in together as Minnesota attorney general and governor in 2019.
Could they both end up working for Kamala Harris if she wins the White House in November?
On Saturday, a former cabinet member for Donald Trump said on X that Harris campaign officials recently told Arab-American leaders in Detroit that Ellison was on Harris’s shortlist for U.S attorney general.
“Arab American leaders in Detroit have been told by the Kamala campaign that @keithellison is on the short list to be Attorney General if she should win,” Richard Grenell, former director of national intelligence for the Trump administration, said in a social media post on Saturday morning. Later that day, Ellison, a two-term Democratic attorney general of Minnesota, denied the claim.
“This is a lie designed to trigger the Muslim-haters,” Ellison wrote on X in response to Grenell’s earlier post.
This is a lie designed to trigger the Muslim-haters. https://t.co/vWPy6IiBV7
— Keith Ellison (@keithellison) September 7, 2024
On Sunday, Trump’s campaign told Fox News that “Keith Ellison would be a natural fit in a Kamala Harris administration.”
“Both (Ellison and Harris) are radical liberals who support ending cash bail and releasing violent criminals into American neighborhoods,” said Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary.
Ellison has ties, influential allies in his native Detroit
A native of Detroit, Ellison is well known as being the first Muslim elected to Congress. While Ellison’s entire political career has been based in Minnesota, a state where he moved to attend law school more than 30 years ago, the progressive Democrat still counts many Michigan Democrats as his staunch allies.
Last summer Ellison returned to his hometown to promote his new book, “Break the Wheel,” where he mainly discussed his role in the prosecution of four police officers who were found guilty in connection with the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd. In attendance at the Ellison book talk was U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, whom Ellison referred to as a dear friend. Tlaib represents a U.S. House district in Michigan with a significant Muslim population, which many political pundits credit with helping Biden win Michigan’s 16 electoral votes in 2020.
Last week Vice President Harris was in Detroit for a Labor Day campaign event. While speaking inside a high school at the Labor Day celebration designed to shore up support from the large labor sector in the swing state of Michigan, several pro-Palestine protesters staged a demonstration outside.
“Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide,” demonstrators chanted outside the Harris campaign rally at Northwestern High School. At the protest, several demonstrators demanded a ceasefire in Gaza and announced they wouldn’t support the Harris-Walz ticket if it didn’t help end the Israeli military operation against Hamas in Gaza.
Last month at the Democratic National Convention, Ellison stumped on stage for Harris and Walz, drawing on his relationship with the two-term Democratic governor of Minnesota, who appointed him as a special prosecutor in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin in 2020.
“When I first saw the video of the murder of George Floyd I was heartbroken,” Ellison said during his four-minute speech the same night Walz accepted his vice presidential nomination. “I was angry. And that morning my phone rang. And on that line was Gov. Tim Walz. Tim Walz felt the exact same way I did. And a few days later Tim appointed me to prosecute Floyd’s murder. Almost a year after that, minutes after the guilty verdict came down, my phone rang again. And it was vice president Kamala Harris, calling to congratulate my team and the work.”
Hank Long
Hank Long is a journalism and communications professional whose writing career includes coverage of the Minnesota legislature, city and county governments and the commercial real estate industry. Hank received his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, where he studied journalism, and his law degree at the University of St. Thomas. The Minnesota native lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and four children. His dream is to be around when the Vikings win the Super Bowl.
