So the Strib thinks we should send to Washington a man whose formative experiences all came in Washington (during one of its most dysfunctional periods), and this man — unless overtaken by ambition or disgust — should be able to spend the rest of his life in Washington. There's logic to a Mike Erlandson endorsement, but it's not my logic.
In fact, I don't think Washington has been a place where logic has prevailed much, and knowing how to get things done in a place that mostly gets the wrong things done doesn't seem that useful, either.
Mike Erlandson knows how to navigate in the swamp. Fine. That's better than getting lost. But I don't want a Congressman who's comfortable. I don't want a Congressman who fits in right away. I don't want a Congressman who knows where to park and who makes the best martinis.
I want Keith Ellison in Congress, a Black, Catholic-raised Minneapolis Muslim fireball who knows street kids and criminals as well as Sam Kaplan and Walter Mondale.
I knew Paul Wellstone from the year he rolled into Minnesota, scarcely older than the kids he was teaching, and we had sporadic contacts over the years. He made me cringe sometimes, because he could be too intense, too single minded, too certain. But he had a heart and integrity that you wanted in the room where decisions were being made, where deals were being cut, where regular people's lives were being affected.
I want Keith Ellison's heart in the room. There will be plenty of other people who know how to cut the deal.
We have a friend who is a doctor and has risen to a position of great influence and responsibility, very well deserved. She works hard, she listens, she studies, and she has a way of giving herself to others that people see immediately. Yet I remember her phone being cut off because she didn't pay the bills. Her car being impounded because she didn't renew her plates. I'm sure there were unpaid parking tickets, too. These were all the signs of someone who disregarded personal business, not the law, because she was so dedicated to being a good servant.
I look at Keith Ellison, and I see a man focused on being a servant.
I have hired a lot of people and made a lot of mistakes by talking myself into a candidate, by holding up a pattern and moving it around in the light just so until it fit the person in front of me. I've vetted resumes, pored over tests, read samples, interviewed, checked references and dug around on my own — and I've been wrong about as often as I've been right. The times I overruled my gut with all the data, well, I had to clean up afterwards. And the times I just knew I had the right person, despite seeing the warts, the inexperience, the rough edges, well, I did have the right person.
I don't get to have that moment of clarity very often, but when it happens, I know what to do.
And that's why I'm voting for Keith Ellison.
