A campaign ad by Republican gubernatorial candidate Lisa Demuth calling out “Somali gangs” and singling out a Somali American man’s alleged planned attack at the Mall of America is drawing condemnation from some community members and political analysts.
The ad, which first appeared earlier this month, begins over dramatic music.
“Minnesota is in crisis,” Demuth tells the viewer. “The fraud and the crime — it’s exploding.”
The ad cuts to Demuth standing outside the Mall of America while words “terrorist attack” flash on the screen when Demuth says them.
“A Somali American man arrested for a terrorist attack planned for right here,” Demuth says. “This is not who we are.”
The camera cuts to Demuth standing near the Eden Prairie High School football field, where a shooting took place nearby on Oct. 2 during the school’s homecoming game.
“We need safe communities, not Somali gang shootouts like the one that happened here,” Demuth says.
The ad next finds Demuth standing outside the basketball court of Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in Edina, where gunfire broke out in late September. Demuth refers to the shooting, which involved Somali youth, but does not mention the ethnicity of those involved in it.
“Enough is enough,” Demuth states at the end of the 30-second ad.
Demuth, who did not respond to requests for comment for this story, is running against Democrat Amy Klobuchar for governor. Demuth would be the first Black woman elected governor in the country if she wins next week. Polls, however, show her lagging behind Klobuchar.
The ad comes as rhetoric against Somalis intensified over the past year, starting with President Donald Trump calling the community “garbage” last year.
The ad and others like it prompted Imam Hassan Dhooye, who leads Al-Hikmah Islamic Center in Minneapolis, to denounce the rhetoric to his many social media followers.
“I want to name this for what it is: explicit racial attacks in paid political form,” he wrote on Oct. 19. “This community did not come to Minnesota to become a campaign prop. We came to work, worship, raise families, and contribute, and by every measure, that is exactly what we have done.”
Dhooye continued: “Using an entire community as a symbol of corruption, in the final weeks before an election, is not a political strategy. It is a moral failure. And it will be answered not with anger, but with votes.”
Yet some local Somalis like Mohamed Amin, who’s been active with the Republican Party of Minnesota for 25 years, defended the ad as not singling out the entire community, but instead denouncing specific incidents that happened to involve specific Somalis.
In referencing the planned attack at the Mall of America and the shootings in Eden Prairie and Edina, Demuth was simply “stating the facts,” Amin argued.
“Stating the facts is not a problem,” he told Sahan Journal. “Unfortunately, these facts are political. They have a political advantage.”
Amin said that as Minnesota House speaker, Demuth presided over a bipartisan declaration supporting Minnesota’s Somali community toward the end of the most recent legislative session.
“I know Lisa,” Amin said. “It’s not in her heart. It’s not in her Christian values.”
The ad makes implicit racial appeals, according to University of Minnesota political science Prof. Michael Minta. By this, Minta means that the ad is going for the public’s subconscious bias instead of an explicit, direct bias. For example, the ad makes an issue out of crime, not race.
Before the civil rights era of the 1950s and ’60s, politicians often made direct, explicit attacks against racial groups. But following that era, the tactic changed to implicit appeals, made most notable with the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad from then-presidential candidate George H.W. Bush.
Candidates of color have used the strategy throughout the years as well, Minta said. He pointed to the 1989 mayoral contest in Atlanta between Maynard Jackson and Michael Lomax, two Black men. In it, Lomax made implicit racial appeals by using the crack epidemic and street gangs in his rhetoric. In the end, it didn’t work.
Minta said he sees this playing out in the fraud rhetoric and Somali crime rhetoric during this political cycle. Neither messaging mentions the involvement of Aimee Bock, a white woman, in the Feeding Our Future food aid fraud — or recent high-profile violence perpetrated by white individuals, such as the Annunciation Catholic School shooting or the killing of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.
“It’s not about corruption, it’s about who’s engaging in the grift,” Minta said. “They understand that’s the face, even if more players were involved.”
Minta noted that Demuth’s ad also exploits tension within Black communities in Minnesota.
“Black is a pan-ethnic identity, and there’s fissures between the Black community that has been here for a long time and people who are immigrants,” he said.
Some in the Black community may not see rhetoric against Somalis as a problem.
“Blacks here might not see that as an issue that affects all Blacks, but instead a Somali group who are not a part of us,” he said. “Demuth and the campaign team, they understand these divisions.”
Minta noted that he himself was at the Eden Prairie homecoming game when the shooting outside of it happened and everyone had to evacuate. His teenage son plays on the football team.
Minta’s personal opinion of the Demuth ad? “It’s very racist,” he said.
