Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, at left, spoke with Congressional District 7 DFL chair Jennifer Cronin before giving the keynote address at the CD7 fall fundraiser on Saturday. DFL supporters from around the district gathered at the Tim and Connie Velde farm north of Hanley Falls.

HANLEY FALLS — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said his office is working on a couple of major issues facing the state.

“The biggest problem we’ve got is gun violence and auto thefts. And auto thefts are a big problem,” Ellison said Saturday, during a stop at a Democratic fundraiser in southwest Minnesota.

Ellison was the keynote speaker at the DFL fall fundraiser for Congressional District 7, which was held Saturday at the Tim and Connie Velde farm north of Hanley Falls.

In his keynote speech, Ellison called on DFL members to support Democratic candidates in 2024. He also spoke with the Independent about what he saw as key issues facing the Minnesota. Two major ones were gun violence and auto thefts, he said.

Ellison said stopping “straw purchasers” from being able to buy firearms for others was one way for Minnesota to help address gun trafficking and violence. In a straw purchase, a person buys a gun for someone else who can’t legally buy firearms.

“If you’ve got a clean record, you might buy a gun and sell it to somebody with a bad record,” Ellison said. “We’ve been using our legal authority to stop that.”

Last year, Ellison filed a lawsuit against Fleet Farm for claims that Fleet Farm negligently sold firearms to straw purchasers. The Attorney General’s Office said Fleet Farm sold at least 37 firearms to two straw purchasers over the course of 16 months. One of the guns Fleet Farm sold to straw purchaser Jerome Horton was used in a 2021 shootout at a St. Paul bar that injured 14 people and killed a 27-year-old woman, the Attorney General’s Office said.

In June, a federal court denied Fleet Farm’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Ellison said the Attorney General’s Office was also working to take action on auto thefts.

“We’re looking at a lawsuit against Kia and Hyundai,” Ellison said. Thefts of Kias and Hyundais skyrocketed in Minneapolis and St. Paul between 2021 and 2022, because many of those vehicles lacked anti-theft engine immobilizers.

In August, Ellison was one of a group of attorneys general who called for Hyundai and Kia to recall or buy back the theft-prone vehicles and equip them with engine-immobilizer technology. Earlier this year, Ellison had also announced he was launching a civil investigation into the sale of the theft-prone vehicles.

In his keynote speech, Ellison also weighed in on recent legislation in Minnesota, like making school meals free for all children.

“This is a good piece of legislation,” Ellison said. “It is an act of compassion for our children.”

In 2022, Ellison had taken action on a different school lunch issue, when he issued an opinion ruling that school districts couldn’t offer students with debt on their lunch accounts different meals from everyone else.

Ellison encouraged Democrats to keep organizing in the lead-up to the 2024 elections.

“We can absolutely beat Michelle Fischbach,” he said. But it would mean getting “up close and personal” with voters. “We’ve gotta have a grassroots organizing, knock-door relationship with everybody in the seventh CD.”

It was also important for the DFL to have a candidate running in CD7, Ellison said. “We need somebody to step forward,” he said.

Tim Velde said it wasn’t Ellison’s first time meeting with residents of rural Minnesota. Velde said Ellison listened to rural residents when he was serving in Congress, and Ellison also reflected on a past visit to the Velde farm to discuss rural policy.

“Mostly we were talking about things like corporate power, and how large corporate entities have enough market power to impose their will on individual family farms, on workers, on small business owners, and how we need a fair economy that has meaningful competition and accountability. And that was a really important conversation,” Ellison said.

“This economy of ours, this country of ours, it can be better, even though I believe that we have the greatest country in the world,” Ellison told the audience. “I still think that there’s higher heights for us to climb.”