Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn, who was elected in 2018 to represent Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District in the southern part of the state, died Friday at the age of 59 after a two-year battle with kidney cancer.
The Minnesota Reformer writes that state law requires that a special general election take place Aug. 9, which is the same day as the statewide primary, for the remaining months of Hagedorn’s term, with a special primary occurring 11 weeks prior on May 24. Hagedorn’s constituency used to be very competitive territory in presidential elections, but Donald Trump carried it 54-44 in 2020 as Hagedorn was winning reelection by a considerably smaller 49-46 spread; the special election will be held under the congressional lines that have been in place for a decade.
Hagedorn was the son of Tom Hagedorn, who was elected to the House himself in 1974 and lost in 1982, and he got his start in 1984 working as a congressional aide for another Minnesota Republican, Arlan Stangeland. Hagedorn, after stints in the Treasury Department and Bureau of Engraving and Printing, decided to run for Congress himself for the first time in the 2010 cycle against Democratic Rep. Tim Walz. He ended his campaign before the primary, though, when he failed to secure the party endorsement at GOP District Convention, which marked the end of the first of what would be three unsuccessful bids for the House.
Hagedorn tried again in 2014, and while he again dropped out after losing the endorsement again, this time he got back in and went on to defeat businessman Aaron Miller 54-46 in the primary. However, while this 50-48 Obama district looked competitive on paper, especially as Team Blue’s fortunes continued to suffer nationwide, national Republicans showed little interest in aiding the underfunded Hagedorn against Walz, who had proven to be a strong vote-getter. It didn’t help the challenger when his old offensive writings began to circulate (in one 2002 post, he labeled Washington Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell “undeserving bimbos in tennis shoes”), and he soon lost 54-46.
Hagedorn launched another campaign the next cycle, but major donors and outside groups once again believed that Walz was secure. But this area, which is home to a large working class white electorate, proved to be very amenable to Trump, and his coattails were almost enough to put Hagedorn over the top: Trump carried the 1st 53-38, and Walz only won 50.3-49.7.
Hagedorn quickly announced his fourth bid, and his prospects improved after Walz decided to launch what turned out to be a successful campaign for governor rather than seek reelection. Plenty of Republicans were still unhappy with their two-time nominee (the conservative Washington Examiner published an op-ed titled, Jim Hagedorn: The worst Republican candidate in America?), but he defeated state Sen. Carla Nelson first at the party convention and then 60-32 in the primary.
Hagedorn’s general election opponent for 2018 was Army veteran Dan Feehan, and this time, both parties quickly identified this as a major battleground. The Republican’s allies ran one of the most xenophobic campaigns of the cycle against the Democrat, and the NRCC ran antisemitic ad after antisemitic ad tying Feehan, who is not Jewish, to philanthropist and Holocaust survivor George Soros. Hagedorn had to run in a hostile national political climate, but this time, the area’s move to the right was enough to give him a 50.1-49.7 victory.
Feehan sought a rematch for 2020, and Democrats were encouraged by polls showing Biden in position to return this district to the blue corner and by bad headlines for the new congressman. The Minnesota Reformer first reported that Hagedorn used $110,000 in taxpayer money to pay a company owned by one of his staffers to print constituent mailers, and that his office had also given $340,000 to another firm called Abernathy West for a similar job. And weeks before Election Day, Politico brought the bizarre story detailing how Hagedorn hadn’t paid rent on a mysterious office whose owner said it didn’t actually exist.
However, while Hagedorn did run behind the top of the ticket, Trump’s 54-44 win here was enough to get the incumbent to a 49-46 victory. The House Ethics Committee announced last year that it was probing Hagedorn, and the investigation appeared to be related to the stories that broke during his last campaign. No serious Democrats, though, had shown any public interest in taking on the congressman this cycle.