Politico’s Daniel Newhauser reported Friday that vulnerable Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn has not disclosed paying any rent on the southern Minnesota campaign office he’s used since 2013, an arrangement that may violate campaign finance laws. Yet while this might sound like a run-of-the-mill campaign finance story, we promise you it's anything but.
The story starts with the Brett’s Building in Mankato, Minnesota, a rehabilitated department store that's been owned for most of the past seven years by a Hagedoorn donor named Gordon Awsumb. Newhauser writes that both Hagedorn’s campaign and Awsumb have given “conflicting accounts of why no payments have been disclosed,” saying it “adds up to a portrait of, at best, highly irregular or sloppy spending practices; at worst, it’s a breach of campaign finance law.”
As Newhauser explains, campaigns are required to pay market rates for all facilities they use. Space can be donated, but it must be reported as an “in-kind contribution” to the FEC. Like regular donations, however, in-kind contributions are limited to $5,600 per election cycle, so the overage on any donated rental worth more than that over a two-year period must be paid for by the campaign.
Hagedorn, who unsuccessfully ran for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District in 2014 and 2016 before finally winning it last cycle, has identified the Suite 7 office in the Brett’s Building as his headquarters in his FEC paperwork for seven years, but he’s never listed a single rent payment or in-kind contribution for it.
So far, neither Hagedorn’s team or Awsumb have given a convincing explanation. Thomas Datwyler, who handles the Hagedorn campaign’s finances, first told Politico he was “pretty positive” the congressman uses only a “very minuscule” portion of Suite 7, claiming it had a rent value of less than $200 per cycle, which is the minimum amount the FEC requires to be reported. Newhauser, however, observes that such a rental would amount to no more than a few square feet, which would make for an absurdly small office space.
It’s unlikely, shall we say, that Hagedorn was able to wage four campaigns for Congress in what would be the world’s tiniest office. Indeed, Hagedorn’s social media account and news outlets have repeatedly posted pictures of the campaign operating out of what seems to be a normal-sized office, complete with a couch and a cutout of Ronald Reagan.
Yet even if Hagedorn managed to somehow get by with a location that cardboard Ronnie couldn’t lay down in, it wouldn’t matter: As Newhauser writes, Awsumb donated more than $200 in cash to Hagedorn, so a micro-office space would still need to be disclosed to the FEC as an in-kind contribution. Datwyler said he would follow up but never did.
Awsumb himself only added to the confusion. After first claiming that the space amounted to a storage locker where Hagedorn “stored signs,” he later emailed Politico, “The Hagedorn Campaign does not now and has never in the past leased office space in the Mankato Place Complex/Brett’s building.” Awsumb continued, “No rent-free office space has been provided to the Hagedorn Campaign."
In a line that almost channeled Being John Malkovich, Awsumb even claimed that "Suite 7 does not exist as a physical office location within the building.” However, in 2018, the state GOP sent out invitations to a Hagedorn event in what seems to have been a very real Suite 7.
To make matters even stranger, it's possible that Awsumb's claim that Suite 7 is a mere figment of our collective imagination is true—at least as of today. Politico ventured to the Brett’s Building and found that Suite 7 appears to have been absorbed, Borg-like, into another office. Whatever plane of reality the suite exists on, however, Newhauser detected no sign of Hagedorn’s campaign in the building, even though his September FEC filing listed Suite 7 as his office.
Hagedorn, wherever he’s campaigning from, faces a tough reelection campaign in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District against Democrat Dan Feehan, who has already been attacking the incumbent’s ethics on other grounds.
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