Keith Ellison

Keith Ellison, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, is a former trial lawyer and former director of a nonprofit legal rights center for indigent clients. With his election to the United States House of Representatives in 2006, Ellison became the first African American elected to the House from Minnesota. He is also the first Muslim elected to the United States congress.http://www.biography.com/articles/Keith-Ellison-213034 He won the November 2006 election against Republican Alan Fine with 56 percent of the vote.http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/us/politics/10muslims.html Ellison was re-elected to his seat in 2008 with 70.9 percent of the vote, facing Republican Barb Davis White. He was re-elected again in 2010 with 68 percent of the vote.http://www.nationaljournal.com/almanac/2008/people/mn/rep_mn05.phphttp://www.politicsdaily.com/tag/Keith%20Ellison/

Ellison generated controversy when he stated his intent to use a copy of the Quran instead of the Bible at his swearing in ceremony. Representative Virgil Goode (R-VA) spoke out against Ellison's decision as a threat to "the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America."http://articles.cnn.com/2006-12-20/politics/lawmaker.koran_1_virgil-goode-position-strict-immigration-policies-american-citizens-don-t-wake?_s=PM:POLITICS At the ceremony, Ellison was sworn in on a Quran that was once owned by Thomas Jefferson. The copy was loaned to Ellison by the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress.http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6718662 President Barack Obama referred favorably to Ellison's decision in an address to largely Muslim audience in Cairo, Egypt saying, "When the first Muslim-American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Quran that one of our Founding Fathers - Thomas Jefferson - kept in his personal library."http://www.biography.com/articles/Keith-Ellison-213034http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/182765/obama-revisionism-adams-and-jefferson-friends-islam-andrew-c-mccarthy

Ellison was the third of five sons, born in Detroit, Michigan, to a psychiatrist father and a social worker mother. He was raised as a Roman Catholic. His family was involved in the Civil Rights Movement. http://ellison.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=21:official-biography&catid=13

Ellison converted from Catholicism to Islam at age 19 while attending Wayne State University in Detroit. He says he found in Islam a spiritual practice concerned with issues of social justice. While attending law school at the University of Minnesota, Ellison wrote a favorable article concerning the Nation of Islam. He also worked as an organizer for Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March in 1995. However, Ellison has denounced Minister Farrakhan's anti-semitic statements.http://www.biography.com/articles/Keith-Ellison-213034

After graduating from law school, Ellison went on to work as a trial attorney specializing in civil rights and criminal defense law. Later he became the executive director at a nonprofit Legal Rights Center that specialized in the defense of indigent clients.http://www.keithellison.org/about

When Ellison took his seat in the 110th United States Congress in 2007, he voted with the Democratic majority to raise the national minimum wage, fund stem cell research, and allow Medicare to negotiate over prices with pharmaceutical companies.http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billsearch.xpd?sponsor=412215 He opposed President George W. Bush's Iraq War troop surge of 2007, instead arguing for immediate withdrawal of US military forces from Iraq. When a war funding bill came before congress in 2007, he voted with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats against continued funding for the Iraq War without any timetables for withdrawal.http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN0839516120080508 On May 3, 2007, he introduced a bill to stop credit card companies from raising interest rates on customers who are behind in their payments to other creditors. House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank supported this bill.http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/house/11759746.html Ellison endorsed the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama.http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,253369,00.html He also cosponsored a bill with Representative Dennis Kucinich to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney for high crimes and misdemeanors.http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-hr333/news/5?sort=toprated