A day after lawyer Keith Ellison won the Dem primary, putting him on track to become the first Muslim in Congress, his GOP opponent is attacking him as an anti-Semite. Foe Alan Fine yesterday said he was "personally offended as a Jew that we have a candidate like this running for U.S. Congress." Fine's charges are based on Ellison's past ties with the Nation of Islam, ties which Ellison claims have been misrepresented. It should be noted, however, that Ellison doesn't just make local Republicans queasy: Some Minnesota Dems are declining to say whether they'll back him.

Fine's charges:

Fine, in an emotion-choked statement at a news conference, harshly condemned Ellison, focusing particularly on his past links to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

"I'm extremely concerned about Keith Ellison, Keith Hakim, Keith X Ellison, Keith Ellison Muhammad," Fine said, referring to names Ellison used when he wrote several editorials for the University of Minnesota Daily when he was a law student in the early 1990s. "I'm personally offended that this person is a candidate for U.S. Congress. ... He is the follower of a known racist, Louis Farrakhan, who promoted division between the people of our nation, a person who believes that the white man is the anti-Christ, a person who called for the destruction of our nation, a person who believes that Jews are the scourge of the Earth. I'm personally offended as a Jew that we have a candidate like this running for U.S. Congress."

The Ellison campaign's reaction:

Ellison issued a statement, saying that Fine's remarks are "diametrically opposed to what our campaign has been about" and that to respond directly to the remarks is "to be sullied by them. This campaign is about inclusion, not alienation."

In the past, Ellison has said his ties to Farrakhan included no more 18 months in the 1990s, primarily spent organizing for the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. He said he never met the Chicago-based leader.

Farrakhan came up early in the DFL campaign for the nomination, and in June, Ellison wrote to the Jewish Community Relations Council that he had wrongly dismissed concerns that Farrakhan was anti-Semitic. "I should have come to that conclusion that they were anti-Semitic earlier than I did. I regret that I didn't," he wrote.