Ellison’s office calls Smart Politics report “shameful”

Below is my full statement I made to the Minnesota Independent, which helps to situate the analysis in its entire context:

“The significance of Representative Ellison’s fundraising highlighted throughout the blog is that the contributions are from out-of-state, not the religious background of his contributors. The Smart Politics analysis focused on Congressman Ellison’s uncharacteristically high out-of-state contributions, vis-à-vis other members of the Minnesota U.S. House delegation.

Ellison’s out-of-state contributions stand out, particularly juxtaposed against his fellow Minnesota U.S. Representatives who have similarly low terms of service in D.C., such as Representative Michele Bachmann, also a 2-term member of Congress. The analysis’ reference to the Congressman’s religion was presented in that descriptive context, explaining what is unique about his biography (the first Muslim elected to Congress) as well as that of Rep. Bachmann (her frequent high-profile national media appearances). One is coinciding with an overwhelmingly high percentage of itemized individual contributions in-state (Bachmann) and the other is coinciding with a very high percentage of contributions from out-of-state (Ellison).

The analysis in no place discusses the religious background of Ellison’s actual contributors – Congressman Ellison is the one who connects those dots with his rejoinder. The analysis offers a descriptive account of the demographics of some of the states from which the Congressman is raising such a large percentage of campaign funds. The important question to ask Rep. Ellison is why such a comparatively low percentage of Minnesotans, and particularly people from his 5th District, are contributing to his campaign.

With regards to Ellison’s margin of victory, Smart Politics in fact highlighted the Congressman’s 48.9-point victory margin in 2008, and stated his constituents, regardless of the source of his funding, “Are nonetheless quite content with his voting record and leadership on Capitol Hill.”

Smart Politics concurs with the Congressman that the economic impact is affecting members of all religious faiths, and has extensively tracked the historic unemployment trends facing the Gopher State during the past several months on its blog.”

How does his out of state contribution rate compare to other representatives that have 49 point victory margins?

Seems to me that his local contributions could be affected by the familiarity of his constituents with his more than comfortable victory margins.

> How does his out of state contribution rate compare to other representatives that have 49 point
> victory margins?

For a comparison in Rep. Ellison’s neighboring 4th Congressional District, fellow DFLer, Betty McCollum, won by 37.1 points in her blowout victory last November, and yet she raised just 23.7 percent of her itemized individual contributions from out-of-state in Q1 2009. McCollum also represents an extremely safe DFL district, with the DFL having won every election there since 1948.

The Humphrey Institute: What a bunch of wankers. I remember when John Brandl worked there – he was such a proponent of vouchers and other right wing ideas. Humphrey himself would be rolling over in his grave if he knew what was being done in his name.

Rep. Ellison represents a constituancy that has a lot more poverty and I’d be willing to guess, has a much lower median income range than Betty McCollum’s district. Of course he’s going to need to raise funding from outside his district. I gave him money too and I live in Brooklyn Park. So what? His family in MI gave him money. Big whup. The only people that are going to think there was any meaningful point to this article are probably the same people who think Obama wasn’t really born in America.
I agree with Rob. I can’t believe an article like that would come out of anything with the name Humphrey. That’s just wrong.

“He had one of the hightest, if not the highest, margins of victory. . .so he must be doing something right.” Sorry, you’re comparing apples and oranges. He’s the newly elected representative from the 5th district. People in the 5th district would vote for a guinea pig as long as it’s affiliated with the Democratic party. Voting margin does not equate to a job performance “rating” when you’re new to the job. If he gets re-elected, THAT voting margin will be a reflection on his job performance rating.

> Rep. Ellison represents a constituancy that has a lot more poverty and I’d be willing to guess,
> has a much lower median income range than Betty McCollum’s district.

True – but the median income of Ellison’s CD ($48,287) is basically the same as that of fellow DFLer Tim Walz ($49,274) (data source: 2007 American Community Survey). Walz’s Q1 2009 out-of-state itemized individual contribution rate: 7.2 percent.

Also, the median income of the 5th is also higher than Collin Peterson’s 7th CD ($44,311), which is the lowest in the state. Peterson’s Q1 2009 out-of-state itemized individual contribution rate: still 30 points less than Ellison, 53.5 percent.

I think the big factor missing is the amount of small contributions. The data Eric had to work with including just reported contributions, which are over $200. I’m curious as to how the numbers change if those are included. I donated and I’m in the district, but it was too little to be reported, which makes me wonder how many other such donors there are.

> I think the big factor missing is the amount of small contributions.

I addressed this issue in my article:

“Itemized individual contributions (which are normally those totaling more than $200), account for approximately three-fourths of Ellison’s total individual contributions (73.0 percent), or nearly $1.3 million since 2006. Twenty-seven percent of such funds have come in the form of smaller (unitemized) donations during that span, or about $479K.”

Unitemized contributions cannot be broken down by in-state/out-of-state.

In Q1 2009, Michele Bachmann led the way with 31.8 percent of her contributions coming from such small donors. Ellison came in at 21.2 percent.

The statistics that Ostermeier has compiled appear to be statistically significant and are definitely politically significant. The figures clearly demonstrate that Ellison’s financial support in his district has proportionately diminished since his election, and has now become remarkably low in raw dollar amount. The debatable question is why? Ostermeier effectively explains that his margin of victory and the income level of the constituents are not viable explanations based on comparisons to other representatives. In addition to Ostermeier’s observations, there are plenty of wealthy and affluent people who live in Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs, as well as activists of more modest means who are able and willing to donate money to causes they believe in. Many of them did so for Ellison in his first campaign. Ostermeier’s implications that Ellison is serving the interest of Muslims outside his district rather than his constituents, however, lacks any support and is vulnerable to allegations of prejudice that are brought forth. At the same time, Ellison’s campaign is obviously overplaying this angle to distract from any efforts to come up with more insightful explanations. A fact that refutes Ostermeier’s theory but also hurts Ellison’s case, is that in Q1 2009, Ellison does not appear to have received any donations from persons with Muslim-sounding names in his own district, whereas he received many such donations previously. So what is the explanation?

Here is my theory – Ellison’s core constituencies in his district are extremely unenthusiastic about his representation. He won by a huge margin because he is a DFLer in one of the most overwhelmingly Democratic districts in the country and he had no credible opposition. It was not because Ellison’s constituents are enamored with him, like Bachman’s constituents obviously are real enthused about her. That is where the comes in. Whatever one thinks of Bachman’s or Ellison’s politics, Bachman has remained true to her core constituencies and Ellison has not. Ellison portrayed himself as a peace and justice candidate, and an advocate for the economically oppressed. Since election, he has compromised his principles and catered to the established power-structure in DC at every opportunity. Even his Muslim supporters who contributed who accounted for a very large amount of donations in the past have backed off – at least those in his district and are presumably most familiar with him. So it is only people who are less familiar with Ellison, and his family, that are still motivated to contribute.

Jordan says:

“Ellison’s core constituencies in his district are extremely unenthusiastic about his representation”

Uh, no. There’s an alternative explanation: Everyone in the district KNOWS he will have no trouble getting reelected, so why contribute? His approval is sky-high, despite the unethical and racist Humphrey Institute and the Star Tribune implying that he is some kind of Muslim plant.

Rob, in fairness, both explanations are true. There are definitely people who continue to support Ellison (as partially reflected in the flood of supportive comments he gets in response to every blog article), and there are many people who would prefer to donate to campaigns where it will make a difference. At the same time, safe incumbents continue to raise huge amounts of money – usually from their constituencies as wells as economically motivated donations. (Ellison did get a number of PAC donations). Yet, Ellison raised very little last quarter, especially from his district, despite apparently having at least one fundraiser on staff. There is definitely an enthusiasm gap between his almost default victory and the lack of fervency of his base.

If I remember correctly, Ellison was giving money to other candidates by the time the last election came around. I personally am a strong supporter, yet never gave him a penny, and am very happy with his service. OTOH, the Humphrey Institute is a very suspicious place. I remember an absurd column by John Brandl when he worked there that slandered public schools with lies. I wrote a retort that the Strib published after which Brandl asked me to lunch. He basically told me he hated the education bureaucracy because of an incident he once had while working at the dept of education. He had such strong biases that they prevented him from doing honest research of analysis. Look at the recent report from the U’s law school that showed charter school students do 10 points worse in reading and math than students at regular public schools, yet you’ll never see anyone at the HI say that charters suck. They’re stuck with Vin Weber and all the old cronies.

Ostermeier says: The analysis in no place discusses the religious background of Ellison’s actual contributors – Congressman Ellison is the one who connects those dots with his rejoinder. The analysis offers a descriptive account of the demographics of some of the states from which the Congressman is raising such a large percentage of campaign funds.

What crap. Ostermeier’s “descriptive account of the demographics” is what connected the dots, not Ellison. That was the whole point of Ellison’s legitimate complaint. Yet Ostermeier seems to want to brush it off by saying it’s not true? Ostermeier seems to have a hard time accepting criticism, choosing instead to just throw more statistics at the issue to have the last word. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of misfired analysis from this guy. Perhaps he should stick to number crunching and leave the analysis to someone else.

Jordan – you’re way off. There’s absolutely no evidence that Keith’s constituents aren’t happy with his performance. I’m a constituent and someone who watches his voting record, and most people I know and speak with are very knowledgeable about Keith’s work in Congress – and are VERY happy with it. You do some backtracking in your response, but still fail to prove that the lack of fundraising has anything to do with a “lack of fervency” in his base.

“It’s the economy, stupid.”

Since when is the Humphrey Institute at our land grant public university obligated to reflect (let’s just say, all of the time) extreme partisan positions of the left? Any slight deviance from such politics makes it a “suspicious” place and incurs hell and fire condemnation. This is a sad comment on an already left-leaning entity.

In the midst of that skewered expectation comes along Ostermeir. He naively has the guts to make a reasoned, fact based observation and is excoriated for what some other people, such a Ellison, may conclude concerning such observations. It is beyond the pale.