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January 6th Organizers Back AG Ellison’s Opponent with Racist Ad Campaign

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The campaign against Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has been funded by an outside dark-money group, which has blanketed the airwaves with a wave of vicious, false, and racially incendiary advertising. This far-right organization helped organize and fund the Jan. 6 rally that became an assault on the US Capitol. It relies on the same group of wealthy donors and far-right advocacy groups that led the decades-long – and now successful – strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate abortion rights nationwide. This group sees electing Republican candidate Jim Schultz as a key pillar of its radical agenda. He has happily accepted their aid.

The incendiary and false ads are designed to frighten voters with blurry images of crimes in progress, calling Ellison the “criminal's choice” and falsely implying that he has worked to shield violent offenders from the law. The ads unsubtly evoke the notoriously racist 1988 “Willie Horton” ad campaign, which was explicitly designed as an attempt to frighten white voters with stories of a black felon.  

The amount spent on these ads attacking Ellison far outstrips all other advertising expenditures in the race, including by Schultz’s own campaign. In addition, Schultz’s own campaign staff appear to be illegally coordinating these ad buys, as identified in a DFL campaign finance complaint filed a week ago. This allows Schultz to effectively supplement campaign contributions, which are capped under MN law, with hundreds of thousands of unrestricted dollars from wealthy dark-money donors.

By maintaining the legal fiction that these outside dollars are not under his control, Schultz may also be trying to shield his reputation from the scurrilous ads. Schultz, a young man with no courtroom experience and no public leadership experience or profile of any kind, has worked hard to downplay any ties to hard-right groups and their agenda. While he has admitted his powerful personal opposition to abortion rights, he has attempted to argue that these views would be of no consequence in public service. But Schultz’s well-financed supporters provide a strong, and disturbing, clue to his real agenda.

The entity behind the racist and misleading ads calls itself “Minnesota for Freedom.” But legally, no such group exists. 

In reality, the anti-Ellison ads are not coming from Minnesota at all. Instead, Minnesota for Freedom is part of a right-wing dark-money organization in Washington, DC. That group is called RAGA, or the Republican Attorneys General Association. 

RAGA is an ultra-right advocacy organization that helped set in motion the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. Although the group’s nominal purpose is to elect Republicans to state attorney general seats, in 2020 it helped promote Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about a stolen election. In 2021, it was revealed that RAGA supported Donald Trump's January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally with a six-figure donation, and made calls to recruit more attendees for the rally. 

When these facts came to light, a number of RAGA leaders resigned, including the executive director and the attorney general of Georgia. But the group was unchastened, and promoted as its new leader a man named Peter Bisbee – the very same person who had coordinated Jan. 6 recruitment. In other words, the people who organized the Jan. 6 riot are now attempting to elect Jim Schultz as Minnesota AG.

The hard-right rabbit hole goes even deeper. RAGA is heavily funded by dark money, provided by anonymous wealthy donors. However, in public filings, its largest named supporter over the past several years is a group called the Judicial Crisis Network. 
The Judicial Crisis Network is a legal activist group dedicated to installing right-wing and anti-abortion judges at every level of US government. It was one of the main backers of the Supreme Court nominations of Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. The group also works to appoint and elect similar judges in places like Minnesota, so that they can help eliminate the state rights that are the final bulwark against the total loss of reproductive choice.

During their confirmation hearings, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh were cagey on the topic of abortion rights, assuring critics that they would respect settled law. Nonetheless, they received massive financial support from the Judicial Crisis Network, which knew they’d eliminate Roe v. Wade. Jim Schultz, in the Minnesota attorney general race, has been similarly cagey about abortion. But it’s a safe bet that dark-money supporters like the Judicial Crisis Network wouldn’t fund his election ifthey believed he’d protect women’s rights.

Right-wing activists are targeting Keith Ellison with racialized attacks because he has been one of the country’s most effective attorney generals. Ellison has been a consistent defender of justice and order. After George Floyd was murdered, he worked with law enforcement to reduce unrest on the streets of Minneapolis. He then spent a year ensuring that George Floyd’s killer went to prison. Any other result risked greater strife, perhaps nationwide. Ellison achieved what few others have: he used his office to defend public safety and civil rights all at once. The activists targeting him are trying to send a message: anyone who prosecutes a police officer will be punished, even if ignoring police wrongdoing would cause greater disorder. 

Jim Schultz’s biggest backers believe in a different version of America – one in which some groups are controlled by the law, and other groups are above it. Women's long-established rights are sacrificed, while lawless rioters on Jan. 6 are treated as allies. These groups do not care about Minnesota; they’re not even from Minnesota. They’re here to push their agenda and to install another willing pawn in a game they’ve been playing for decades: dismantling the civil and human rights of women, workers and consumers. In doing so, they haven’t hesitated to reuse the racist smear tactics that defined some of the ugliest campaigns in modern American history.

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Myron Orfield, University of Minnesota Law School

Join us Monday, July 18 to hand deliver a letter to Kristen Clarke, the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights notifying of her of our intent to request an investigation into the civil rights violations being committed by the state of New Jersey against the children being forced to attend segregated schools. We are meeting at the Borgata Hotel and Casino at 12 Noon at the Borgata Baking Co. near the self park entrance. Go here if you would like to join us. We know this is late notice for some but many of us will be in AC for the NAACP convention. 

U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke to Address 113th NAACP National Convention

Go here to see letter to US Assisant U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke

Go here to see the letter to Derrick Johnson asking him to uninvite Governor Phil Murphy to the NAACP Convention