Minnesota DFLers address Ellison accusations at Thursday rally

Minnesota’s top democrats say they stand by and support Congressman Keith Ellison for Attorney General, but they have serious concerns about the domestic abuse allegations made against him this weekend.

Ellison has strongly denied these allegations and did so in his victory speech on Tuesday night.

Despite these allegations coming out during the weekend, Ellison blew out his closest competitor by a 30 percentage point spread in the primary.  

Ellison’s former girlfriend Karen Monahan alleges that Ellison mentally abused her during their relationship.

The allegations stem from her son’s Facebook post Saturday night in which he says he’s seen a video showing Ellison dragging his mother.

Monahan told CNN the recording is lost, but told CBS Evening News Thursday evening that she does have the video and does not wish to release it.

Ellison insists it does not exist.

Meanwhile, at a DFL unity news conference Thursday, Gov. Mark Dayton said that while he’d like to know the truth, he stills stands behind Ellison.

“Well, we have two candidates for Attorney General, Congressman Ellison and Representative Wardlaw, and I have no reservations about saying that Keith Ellison would be the vastly superior candidate,” Dayton said.

 “We don’t know how it’s going to develop and what the conclusion is at this point,” added DFL Chairman Ken Martin. “Keith is our nominee, and as the Governor said at this point, we support him, and continue to support him. But it is a developing story, and we don’t know where it’s going.” 

Until they do know where it’s going, one of the questions for other democrats is whether they will campaign for Ellison, or even want him appearing them in their own campaign.

“I have not spoken to Congressman Ellison since these came out and what we’re going is focusing on our campaign and we’re not campaigning with anyone else right now other than ourselves,” said DFL Gubernatorial nominee Tim Walz.

Martin said none of the allegations have been proven and it’s up to individual campaigns to choose how they want to campaign with Ellison.