Muslim Candidate Plays Defense

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, flew to Minneapolis for an Aug. 25 fundraiser for Ellison, who has collected about $400,000, mostly from individual contributors in his district. Awad said that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have both heightened prejudice against Muslims and spurred Muslims to be more politically active in hopes of countering that prejudice.

According to CAIR and other Muslim groups, Ellison would be the first Muslim elected to national office. Awad said the highest Muslim elected official now is a state senator in North Carolina, Larry Shaw, and the last Muslim to make a serious bid for Congress was Ferial Masry, a Saudi-born woman who lost in California in 2004.

Ellison's Democratic opponents are Ember Reichgott Junge, a former state senator who is backed by Emily's List and other women's groups; Mike Erlandson, who was Sabo's longtime chief of staff and has the retiring congressman's support; and Paul Ostrow, a Minneapolis City Council member.

For the most part, they have refrained from mentioning Ellison's religion or attacking him directly, though Ostrow's campaign manager resigned two weeks ago after admitting that he was the source of anonymous e-mails to reporters accusing Ellison of campaign finance violations

In mid-summer, Ellison was hit by allegations involving unpaid traffic and parking tickets, late payment of some taxes in the 1990s, failure to meet deadlines for financial reports in past election campaigns, and his defense of a gang leader while he was running the Legal Rights Center, a nonprofit law office.

Ellison acknowledged last week that his driver's license had been suspended earlier in the year for failure to pay fines. He said he defended a leader of the Vice Lords gang, Sharif Willis, because Willis was working with local police to broker a gang peace. And he said he was now up-to-date on tickets, taxes and financial filings.

"When will the story stop being Farrakhan or traffic tickets?" he said as he headed toward his next campaign appearance. Then he stopped, as if a thought had just come to him.

"I know this is just a taste of what it will be like if I win," he said.