Politics ain’t bean-bag, as the saying goes, and the Minnesota primary election of Tuesday certainly had its share of nastiness.

The weekend allegations of domestic violence against Keith Ellison, six-term congressman and now the DFL’s nominee for attorney general, provided a modern twist on late-campaign surprises.

Karen Monahan, the divorced Ellison’s ex-lover, had been hinting for some time that she had a tale of abuse, but she had declined to go public with that story. It broke late Saturday night when her son published a post about it on Facebook. That post was quickly amplified by two of Ellison’s rivals in the primary field for the attorney general’s job.

Mainstream media outlets rarely want to break a scandalous story about a politician that close to an election. But the timing was not up to any editor. Social media — unedited, immediate and devoid of fact-checking — shoved the sordid tale before the public virtually on the eve of the primary.

If the goal was to sabotage Ellison’s primary chances, it failed. Ellison has built an impressive voter turnout operation in his Minneapolis power base, and he won a majority of the primary vote even with four significant opponents.

But the allegations, denied by Ellison but not disproven, remain. This is a story that figures to reverberate for the three-plus months leading to the general election.

The question arises: Is this episode the beginning of a trend toward dumping explosive allegations right before an election?

The mechanism to do so is obviously readily available.

There is, however, a competing trend that might work against that tactic: early voting. Thousands of Minnesotans had already cast their ballots when the Ellison allegations became public, and those votes already run though the counting machines.

The popularity of early voting may well have blunted the attack on Ellison, although his margin victory was considerably wider than the number of early votes. While many of the early voters may regret they voted before the allegations came to light, those early votes may ultimately force those who want to throw mud to do so earlier in the campaign, when there is time for voters to evaluate the claims.

— Mankato Free Press