'Safe' seat or no, Ellison works at community outreach

Some politicians running for reelection in a safe district can get lax in their campaigning, but Rep. Keith Ellison is working hard in this year's campaign. At a Saturday afternoon meeting of LGBT activists at the Spirit of the Lakes Church in Minneapolis, Ellison expounded on his "politics of inclusion and generosity" and the responsibility to engage every voter in the district even when the odds look good.

The 5th district votes reliably Democratic. It's also one of the biggest in terms of LGBT voters with 12.5 percent identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual, the 10th largest such population in the nation. Where many politicians are hesitant to publicize direct outreach to the LGBT community, Ellison has embraced the community with targeted outreach and dialogue, and signed on as a leader in the House's new LGBT Equality Caucus. Saturday's meeting was key to letting the community know that, at least in Minnesota's 5th, their voice is being represented in Washington.

"The fact that I'm in a quote-endquote safe seat, and some are more risky than others, and if I'm in a seat that has a higher safety than others, doesn't that mean I have a responsibility to look beyond just my own immediate political needs to get reelected?" Ellison told the audience. "There's no excuse for a person in my situation to not try to grow, expand, organize and build the base."

And Ellison said that extending that base and the politics of inclusion and generosity outside the district is just as important.

The Ellison campaign has a goal of bringing 20,000 new voters to the polls in the district in November. And the LGBT community is one of the key groups the campaign hopes to motivate. As several audience members have pointed out, frustration and apathy are taking root in a community that is weary of being used as a political football and tired of promises broken by progressive candidates.

"We are here to help the community understand how we are all in this thing together," Ellison said.

One of the most contentious issues for the community in recent months has been the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a bill that would prohibit sexual orientation and gender identity-based discrimination in housing and employment. Two versions of the bill exist: one that excludes transgender Americans, and had the votes to pass, and one that includes the entire community and was doomed to fail.

Ellison explained why the bill including the transgender community is vital to ending discrimination for everyone even heterosexual persons.

"You can be very male in your gender identity, but if you have certain mannerisms associated with women, that's a gender identity you can be fired for. Because you are not -- in somebody's subjective view -- masculine enough," he said. "They might use that to say you aren't going to be hired, you're not getting the apartment, you're not getting this and your not getting that."

Ellison said that the fully inclusive bill is "indispensable to building equality to include gender identity."

But like all communities, the LGBT community is diverse and there are many issues that effect people's lives. Gas prices, health care costs, immigration reform and aging issues were important topics of discussion even outside a LGBT ccontext. Ellison articulated the importance of politicians to engage on a variety of issues with constituent groups.

"I went to a senior event and i came in there ready to talk. I was loaded with information about senior issues that day," he said. "And these seniors said, 'well, what about the war', 'my grandson can't afford college', 'we got air we breathe and we want to make sure the environment is working for us too." People are complex and are concerned about a variety of issues -- many times they are interconnected.

He said that he didn't always get it right, but it's a vital part of community engagement. "It's fundamental common sense and its something that politicians screw up a lot. We all live in this diverse world and yet we skip over it," he said. "The idea that we are all here, we all have a right to be here and make it work for everybody so we don't ghettoize our politics."

When the progressive movement becomes ghettoized in it's various constituencies, then it's easier for the right to drive a wedge between them with wedge-issue politics. "The question is: how do we take the whole community and say 'we all have to be moving forward'"

And Ellison's work on LGBT issues in Congress is one part of that broader strategy of moving everyone forward -- a career that wasn't lost on audience members. Said one participant, "As one of your constituents I can't tell you how immensely proud I am to be able to go in and vote for someone I really believe in."