Lisa Demuth is running for governor of Minnesota on a promise of "safe communities." Her new campaign ad tells voters who she thinks the danger is.
The 30-second spot, which first appeared this month, puts Demuth outside Eden Prairie High School, Sahan Journal reported. "We need safe communities," she says, "not Somali gang shootouts like the one that happened here."
Before that, the ad opens with Demuth saying, "The fraud and the crime — it's exploding," then puts her outside the Mall of America, with "terrorist attack" on the screen: "A Somali American man arrested for a terrorist attack planned for right here." After Eden Prairie, it moves to the basketball court of an Edina church where gunfire broke out in September. It ends: "Enough is enough."
What the ad does
Demuth's ad names one community, by name, as the face of Minnesota's fraud, crime and terror.
University of Minnesota political science professor Michael Minta told Sahan Journal it's an implicit racial appeal. "It's very racist," he said. On the fraud rhetoric this election cycle: "It's not about corruption, it's about who's engaging in the grift."
Imam Hassan Dhooye of Al-Hikmah Islamic Center in Minneapolis, responding on social media to this ad and others like it, called them "explicit racial attacks in paid political form."
Demuth didn't respond to Sahan Journal's requests for comment.
The shooting she's using
The shooting was real, and it was frightening. On a Friday night in early October, gunfire outside Eden Prairie High School's homecoming game injured two young people, ages 17 and 18, MPR News reported. Police said both were of Somali descent.
Somali community leaders responded by calling for an end to the violence — and warning against exactly what Demuth's ad does. Twin Cities organizer Yusra Mohamud told MPR, "we need to be careful not to let legitimate concerns about violence become permission to generalize about Somali people." Edina's mayor said his city is concerned about "conduct, not ethnicity, not country of origin, not religion."
A Somali Republican, Mohamed Amin, defended the ad to Sahan Journal: "Stating the facts is not a problem." He added, "I know Lisa. It's not in her heart."
But an ad isn't judged by what's in a candidate's heart. It's judged by what it puts on the screen. Demuth chose to say "Somali" rather than "gun."
The gun vote she won't talk about
If Demuth wanted Minnesota schools to be safer from gunfire, she had her chance.
After a shooter killed two children at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, the parents of 10-year-old Harper Moyski say Demuth sat in their living room and promised not to block a floor vote on an assault-weapons ban. When the Senate passed one, she kept it off the House floor — and later bragged to GOP activists that she "led the effort to stop Democrats from taking our guns."
So the candidate running ads about shootouts outside a high school is the House Speaker who blocked the gun bill after children were shot at Annunciation.
A pattern on fraud, too
The "fraud" line in her ad has a history. Demuth took credit for a viral YouTube video accusing Somali-run daycares of fraud. The YouTuber said he had no idea who she was, and state inspectors found children at nearly every center in the video.
Republicans elsewhere are running the same play in the campaign's final days. In Michigan, Trump called Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed a "jihadist" at a rally for his Republican opponent — who insisted the same day that his campaign is "not about Islam."
What we know
Lisa Demuth's governor's ad stands outside Eden Prairie High School and calls for "safe communities, not Somali gang shootouts," and ties Somali Minnesotans to fraud and a terror plot. A University of Minnesota political scientist called it "very racist," and Demuth didn't answer questions about it. As House Speaker, she kept an assault-weapons ban off the floor after the Annunciation Church shooting, despite what the parents of a murdered 10-year-old say she promised them.
