Keith Ellison files to run for Minnesota AG

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) on Tuesday made it official: He’s giving up his congressional seat to enter the race to become Minnesota’s next attorney general. 

Ellison, a six-term liberal and deputy director of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), filed the paperwork in Minneapolis to enter the state attorney general’s race just a few hours before Tuesday’s 5 p.m. deadline. 

He’s running to replace the current attorney general, Lori Swanson, whose bid for a fourth term was sunk on Saturday, when she failed to secure the nomination at her party’s state convention.

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Ellison, among the most liberal lawmakers in Congress, was tapped to become second in command of the DNC after losing a tight contest for the chairmanship to Tom Perez, a Labor secretary under former President Obama.

At the DNC, Ellison was viewed as the voice of the Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wing of a Democratic Party that’s still licking its wounds from a disastrous 2016 cycle, when the internal divisions between Sanders and Hillary Clinton strained the party and helped President Trump win the White House. 

Perez and Ellison appeared to be unified in the effort to help the Democrats rebound in this year’s midterm elections. But tensions were reportedly simmering behind the scenes, reaching a boiling point last month when Perez endorsed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his more liberal primary challenger, actress Cynthia Nixon. 

Ellison, though, is expected to stay on in his role as deputy director at the DNC.

Ellison’s move also highlights the frustration among many rank-and-file House Democrats, who have been in the minority for eight years and have had little room to move into a leadership structure that’s been dominated since 2006 by Reps. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Steny Hoyer (Md.) and James Clyburn (S.C.).

Faced with the bottleneck at the top, some rising House Democrats have opted to leave Congress to pursue other roles. Some of them — such as former Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), who’s now California’s attorney general — seem to have found greater power to push back against President Trump in their new roles than they had in the House. 

Ellison, who’s facing off in an August primary against Matt Pelikan, who beat out Swanson for the state Democrat’s nomination, is hoping to join those ranks.

This story was updated at 4:29 p.m.