Keith Ellison

Keith Maurice Ellison (* August 4, 1963 in Detroit, Michigan ) is an American politician from Minnesota. In the 2006 congressional elections, he was elected in the 5th District of Minnesota with 56 percent of the vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is the first Muslim MP in the U.S. Congress.

Biography

The African-American Ellison grew up with four siblings in Detroit and was educated as Roman Catholics. At the age of 19 he converted to Islam. In 1987 he married Kim Ellison and moved to Minneapolis in 1990 to complete his law studies at the University of Minnesota. He was elected to the House of Representatives from Minnesota in Minneapolis, strongly dominated by minority constituency 58B 2002. Is viewed critically his earlier collaboration with the Nation of Islam, for which he wrote several columns for the student newspaper Minnesota Daily under the name Keith E. Hakim.

Ellison is a member of the Democratic - Farmer-Labor Party. The Iraq war, he rejects and estimates him as "the greatest blunder in U.S. foreign policy since Vietnam " a.

In the 2006 congressional elections Ellison received as a candidate of the fifth electoral district of Minnesota, with 56 percent of the vote and had about 35 percent lead over the second-placed Republican Alan Fine. He took early January 2007 in the 110th Congress of the United States, the place of the retiring Rep. Martin Olav Sabo, a; the House of Representatives, he is a member of the Financial Services Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee. International fame reached Ellison, as he is the first Muslim in Congress and at the inaugural session of the Congress was the first deputy took off his oath on the Koran. It was an ancient edition of 1764 formerly owned by Thomas Jefferson from the Library of Congress.

In 2008, Ellison succeeded by a large margin the re-election. He came to 70.8 percent of the vote, the Republican counter candidate Barb Davis White reached a share of 22 percent, the independent candidate Bill McGaughey scored 6.9 percent.

Together with his wife Kim Ellison has four children.