When news reached Bluestem earlier this summer that Jim Hagedorn would jump into the clown car seeking the Republican endorsement for Congress in Minnesota's Fighting First, our first thought was that we had thought he'd moved back to Washington DC in 2010 after losing an earlier endorsement battle.
Hagedorn finished fourth in 2010 behind endorsed candidate Randy Demmer, Allen Quist and Jim Engstrand.
Our memory isn't failing. The Faribault County Register reports Back for another campaign:
The Blue Earth native and sometimes resident is back to try again to become the Republican candidate to run against U.S. Congressman Tim Walz a year from now in the November 2014 election. . . .
"Sometimes" apparently means that he moves back to the district to try to run for Congress:
In 2009 Hagedorn moved back to Blue Earth to run against Walz, but lost the Republican nomination to Randy Demmer of Rochester. Hagedorn left Blue Earth then in 2010.
"I had both personal and business issues that I had to take care of which meant I had to leave," he says. "But, I have always returned to visit this town over the years."
Now he is back and has once more taken up residence in the city of the Green Giant.
In December 2009, the Faribault County Register reported in Blue Earth man makes bid for Congress:
When his father was elected to Congress, the young Jim Hagedorn went with him to the nation’s capitol. He graduated from George Mason University in Virginia, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government and politics.
After that, he spent 25 years working in Washington. He was a legislative assistant to former Congressman Arlen Stangeland.
From 1991 to 1998, Hagedorn was the Director for Legislativeand Public Affairs for the Financial Management Service, the U.S. Department of the Treasury agency responsible for the management of more than $2 trillion in federal funds.
He also served as the Congressional Affairs Officer for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the department of the Treasury that manufactures U.S. paper currency.
“After my father was elected to represent Southern Minnesota in Congress, I enjoyed a successful career on Capitol Hill,” Hagedorn says in his official press release announcing his candidacy. “Over the years I learned a lot about how government works, but learned even more about how it doesn’t work.”
And just as he is in this cycle, Hagedorn was back in Southern Minnesota in 2009 to serve the people he loves so much that he's found it impossible to take up long-term residence among them:
“I left Capitol Hill and returned to help the people I love the most, because this country is worth defending, our way of life is worth saving and the people of Southern Minnesota are worth fighting for,” Hagedorn states in his news release.
Bluestem thinks that we are witnessing the evolution of a new species of contender: the cicada candidate.
Unlike Allen Quist or Randy Demmer, both of whom stuck it out in their hometowns, Hagedorn burrowed into the Beltway, and now emerges every five years to perch high in the box elder branches to drone on about his undying passion for Southern Minnesota.
Related post from 2009: The acorn that stuck close to the tree; or a first glance at Hagedorn family values.
Photo: A cicada.
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"Unlike Allen Quist or Randy Demmer, both of whom stuck it out in their hometowns, Hagedorn burrowed into the Beltway, and now emerges every five years to perch high in the box elder branches to drone on about his undying passion for Southern Minnesota."
And the only reason he emerges is so he can get a job that keeps him in the Beltway for most of the year!
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Sep 16, 2013 at 09:12 PM