DNC Vice Chair Ellison expected to run for Minnesota AG

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is expected to make a last-minute entry into the race for Minnesota attorney general on Tuesday, according to two people familiar with his plans.

“I will make a decision tomorrow because it’s the filling deadline,” Ellison said, not disputing that he is likely to enter the election.

Ellison has been in Congress since 2007, and served as deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee since last year, as a leader of the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. But he’s been chafing for months at both roles: being in the minority in Congress and being subsumed to DNC Chairman Tom Perez, who beat him for the top job.

Ellison had looked at jumping into the AG race earlier in the year but passed on it after incumbent Lori Swanson skipped her own expected run for governor and seemed set to run for re-election. But then came a weekend of drama at the Minnesota Democrat-Farmer-Laborer convention: Swanson didn’t get a majority of support for reelection and jumped into the governor’s race on Monday.

All eyes quickly turned to Ellison. Beyond the reasons making him want to leave Washington are the reasons drawing him to the job: attorneys general have taken on major significance within the Democratic resistance to the Trump administration, and Ellison is eager to be a leader in that fight.

Ellison would also be seizing on the vacuum left by the sudden resignation of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman last month. Most Democratic attorneys general believe that with his political savvy and following, Ellison would very quickly vault to the front of the pack, alongside other active AGs like Massachusetts’ Maura Healy, Washington’s Bob Ferguson, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, North Carolina’s Josh Stein, and California’s Xavier Becerra. New Jersey’s recently-installed Attorney General Gurbir Grewal is eager to take on a prominent role, too.

Ellison had been expected to file his paperwork by Monday afternoon but did not. He was deep in discussions about it through the day on Monday.

Sources familiar with the race expect that he’ll face a crowded primary, with up to five candidates running. But Ellison would enter with much higher name ID than any of the others, in addition to a network of supporters and donors that would likely be able to swamp other contenders.

The original story can be found here.