Jim Hagedorn’s widow, Jennifer Carnahan, announces run for his open House seat

FIRST ON FOX: Jennifer Carnahan, widow of the late Rep. Jim Hagedorn, R-Minn., introduced Monday that she’s going to run within the particular election for her late husband’s seat within the Home of Representatives.

“I’m proud to announce my candidacy to symbolize Minnesota’s First Congressional District. Although my coronary heart continues to be heavy after Jim’s passing, the encouragement I’ve acquired from all through southern Minnesota has impressed me to hold on his legacy by operating to finish the rest of his time period,” Carnahan wrote in a information launch first offered to Fox Information Digital. 

“Within the last weeks earlier than his passing, Jim informed me to maintain forging forward, to maintain reaching my goals, and to win this seat,” Carnahan added. “Jim was my finest good friend and the love of my life, and it’s his blessing that strengthens me for the challenges forward. I’m dedicated to persevering with my husband’s legacy of combating to safe the border, defending conservative values, safeguarding the integrity of our elections, and serving the folks of Minnesota’s First Congressional District.”

REPUBLICAN REP. JIM HAGEDORN DEAD AT 59

Carnahan turned the primary Asian American girl elected to run both main social gathering in Minnesota, serving because the state’s Republican Occasion chair from 2017-2021. Underneath her management, the Minnesota GOP paid off $1 million in debt and flipped three Home seats – Minnesota’s 1st and eighth Congressional Districts in 2018 and the seventh congressional district in 2020 – from blue to purple. Hagedorn represented the first Congressional District from 2019 to 2022.

“Through the Trump administration we noticed financial and regulatory reform, US power independence, commerce offers just like the USMCA – initiatives that created jobs and offered alternative to folks throughout the nation – together with proper right here in southern Minnesota,” Carnahan added. “Jim and I noticed the remainder of President Trump’s conservative imaginative and prescient stonewalled by the left and a few within the Washington institution. Whereas DC insiders are lining their pockets; arduous working Minnesotans are languishing beneath file inflation, a lawless border and better enter prices for agriculture, impacting all of America.”

“I’m operating to disrupt the established order and get Washington working for the folks once more,” she stated. 

President Donald Trump talks with Minnesota 1st Congressional district Republican nominee Jim Hagedorn because the president arrives at Minneapolis – Saint Paul Worldwide Airport for close by fundraising and campaigning in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Oct. 4, 2018.
(REUTERS/Leah Millis)

“Like President Trump, I’m a businesswoman and fighter,” Carnahan declared. “Right here in Minnesota, I disrupted the established order and introduced the Republican Occasion again to relevance. Now, I ask for the assist of southern Minnesota to do the identical in Washington.”

Hagedorn died on Feb. 17, 2022, after getting admitted to the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, amid a yearslong battle with kidney most cancers and after a optimistic COVID-19 check. He had taken the COVID-19 vaccine. 

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Carnahan resigned as social gathering chair after a federal grand jury indicted outstanding Republican fundraiser and podcast co-host Anton Lazzaro on little one intercourse trafficking expenses In Aug. 2021. Carnahan condemned Lazzaro and pledged to donate to charity all funds he had given her. 

Rep.-elect Jim Hagedorn, R-Minn., is seen after the freshman class picture on the East Entrance of the Capitol on Nov. 14, 2018. (Picture By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Name)
(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Name)

The particular election main for the first Congressional District will happen on Might 24, 2022, with the particular common election on Aug. 9, 2022, based on the Minnesota Secretary of State. The first for the 2022 midterms will even happen on Aug. 9, with the overall election on Nov. 8.

No fewer than seven Republicans have entered the race, together with one former state consultant and two present state representatives. 5 candidates have entered the Democratic Farmer Labor Occasion main, together with Richard Painter, a former White Home ethics lawyer beneath President George W. Bush, and Jeffrey Ettinger, former CEO of Hormel Meals.