Hagedorn, Jim (1962- )

Subterms

    Latest story

    175 Shares199 Views

    Brad Finstad Wins a Special Election to Fill the Seat of Rep. Jim Hagedorn

    by

    Brad Finstad, a Republican former state lawmaker in Minnesota, won a special election for a U.S. House seat, according to The Associated Press. He will complete the final four months remaining in the term of Representative Jim Hagedorn, a Republican, who died from cancer in February.Mr. Finstad, 46, defeated Jeff Ettinger, a Democrat and the retired chief executive of Hormel Foods, a Minnesota company known for introducing Spam in the 1930s. The district, Minnesota’s First, stretches across the state’s southern border from South Dakota to Wisconsin.Mr. Finstad did not perform as well in the district as President Donald J. Trump did in 2020, when Mr. Trump won the area by more than 10 percentage points over Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Finstad beat Mr. Ettinger by only roughly four percentage points, a relatively strong showing for Mr. Ettinger, who ran as a moderate and emphasized his support for abortion rights.The two candidates had tangled over the economy and farming issues in the largely rural district. But in the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Mr. Ettinger turned up the volume on his messaging on abortion. He positioned himself as a business-friendly Democrat and appeared to perform well in some rural pockets as well as in the counties that encompass Rochester and Mankato, education and health care hubs that have drawn residents from upper-income, college-educated and racially diverse backgrounds.Mr. Finstad’s campaign did not think abortion would move the needle at the polls. “It hasn’t really come up with very many voters,” said David Fitzsimmons, a general consultant for the campaign. “Voters seem to be talking about the economy, inflation, gas prices.”Both he and Mr. Ettinger were on the ballot twice, as both men ran successfully in the regular primary for the seat’s full term. They are now headed to a fall rematch, according to The Associated Press.Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Finstad to serve as the Agriculture Department’s rural development director for Minnesota in 2017. He also worked as an area director for the Minnesota Farm Bureau and as an agricultural policy aide for former Representative Mark Kennedy, a Minnesota Republican. Mr. Finstad served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2003 to 2009.Carly Olson More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      What’s On the Ballot and How to Vote in Minnesota’s Primary

      by

      Minnesota voters in the First Congressional District will see some names on the ballot twice on Tuesday. It is not a mistake.There is a special general election to decide who will serve the final four months remaining in the term of Representative Jim Hagedorn, who died in February, as well as a regular primary for the same seat.Not registered to vote? That is OK. The state’s same-day voter registration law means you can still head to the polls on Tuesday.Here is what else to know:How to voteIn-person voting ends at 8 p.m. Central time. Not sure if you are registered to vote? Check here, and use this state site for more information about same-day registration.In most places in Minnesota, voters can cast their ballots in person or by mail with an absentee ballot, if one was requested in advance.Some towns and cities with fewer than 400 registered voters have chosen to hold elections only by mail and delivered ballots to all registered voters before Election Day. Find out if that includes your town here.Mail-in ballots must be received by elections officials on or before Election Day. If you have not already mailed yours, deliver it by hand to the election office that sent it to you no later than 3 p.m. Tuesday. Voters may not return mail-in ballots to polling places. Check the status of your mail ballot here.Where to voteFind your nearest polling place at the secretary of state’s website.What is on the ballotIn addition to the special election and regular primary for Mr. Hagedorn’s seat, Representative Ilhan Omar, a well-known member of the progressive clique known as the squad, is seeking her third term in office and is once again facing a primary challenge from a moderate candidate. This time it is Don Samuels, who is running on a pro-law enforcement platform.There are other statewide contests and some local races, too. See a sample ballot here.Michael C. Bender More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Jim Hagedorn, a Trump Ally in the House, Dies at 59

      by

      A two-term Minnesota conservative, he backed efforts to overturn the election of Joseph Biden as president on spurious grounds of voter fraud.Representative Jim Hagedorn, a second-term Minnesota Republican who was a staunch ally of former President Donald J. Trump and who joined with other members of his party in seeking to overturn the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr., died on Thursday. He was 59. His wife, Jennifer Carnahan Hagedorn, the former chair of the Minnesota Republican Party, announced the death on Facebook. She did not specify the cause or say where he died. He had long been public about his three-year struggle with cancer and announced in January that he had tested positive for Covid-19.Mr. Hagedorn was diagnosed with stage IV kidney cancer in 2019, shortly after he was sworn in as a first-term member of the House of Representatives. He underwent immunotherapy treatment at the Mayo Clinic, and doctors removed the affected kidney in December 2020. He said at the time that 99 percent of the cancer was gone, but he announced in July that it had returned.Mr. Hagedorn had run for a House seat three times without success, in 2010, 2014 and 2016, when he lost by a hair to the incumbent, the Democrat Tim Walz. In 2018, after Mr. Walz left to run successfully for governor, Mr. Hagedorn narrowly won his seat in a race against the Democrat Dan Feehan.In a rematch against Mr. Feehan in 2020, Mr. Hagedorn won by a slightly larger margin, despite his health issues, and was raising money in anticipation of a re-election campaign in November.“He’ll forever be known as a common sense conservative who championed fair tax policy, American energy independence, peace through strength foreign policy and southern Minnesota’s way of life and values,” his campaign said in a statement.Throughout his short tenure in office, Republicans were in the minority in the House. All the while, Mr. Hagedorn remained a strong conservative, worked on behalf of small businesses and rural entrepreneurs, and stood as an ally of Mr. Trump, who won Mr. Hagedorn’s district in 2016 by 15 percentage points.“I’ve said repeatedly since 2016 that of course I support Donald Trump,” Mr. Hagedorn told the Minnesota newspaper The Star Tribune in 2019, “because I felt like if he’d lost, we’d have lost the country.”In December 2020, Mr. Hagedorn was one of 126 Republican members of the House who filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn the election of Mr. Biden as president, a brief based on spurious and disproved allegations of widespread voter fraud. The court rejected the suit, which had sought to throw out the election results in four battleground states.Just hours after the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob of Trump supporters, Mr. Hagedorn was among 147 Republicans who objected to certifying Mr. Biden’s election.“There was no stronger conservative in our state than my husband,” his wife wrote in her statement, “and it showed in how he voted, led and fought for our country.”Mr. Hagedorn, right, was on hand when President Donald J. Trump arrived in Minneapolis in 2018. At center was Dave Hughes, a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. Tom Brenner for The New York TimesJames Lee Hagedorn was born on Aug. 4, 1962, in Blue Earth, Minn., near the Iowa border. His father, Tom Hagedorn, was a U.S. House member and represented some of the same southern Minnesota territory as his son later did. His mother, Kathleen (Mittlestadt) Hagedorn, was a homemaker.Jim was raised on the family farm near Truman, Minn., and in McLean, Va., while his father served in Congress, from 1975 to 1983.He graduated from George Mason University in Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in government and political science in 1993. While a student, he worked as a legislative aide to Representative Arlan Stangeland, another Minnesota Republican. He later worked as a congressional liaison at the Treasury Department and as the congressional affairs officer for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing until 2009.During the early 2000s, Mr. Hagedorn wrote a blog called “Mr. Conservative,” which has since been deleted. His posts took aim at Native Americans, gay people and women, among others.In 2005, when President George W. Bush nominated a woman, the White House counsel Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court (she ultimately withdrew her name), Mr. Hagedorn described her nomination as an effort “to fill the bra of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.”The blog posts resurfaced during Mr. Hagedorn’s unsuccessful run for the House in 2014; he told The Star Tribune that they were old and had been satirical in nature. They surfaced again in 2018, when he won the seat chiefly by proclaiming his loyalty to Mr. Trump.Complete information on his survivors was not available.The final piece of legislation that Mr. Hagedorn introduced, on Feb. 9, was a resolution to place a national debt clock in the House chamber.“The American people deserve full transparency about this nation’s fiscal affairs,” he said, “and this resolution will be a strong reminder to lawmakers as they vote on proposals that could put our country further in debt.” More