In our last post, Hagedorn's 2014 defense of racist, sexist & homophobic blog posts looks like 2009 defense, we asked whether Republican activists knew of the August 12 primary winner's scrubbed blog posts.
Apparently so.
In Friday's Rochester Port Bulletin, Heather Carlson reports in Fillmore County GOP chairman: Hagedorn doesn't deserve endorsement:
Fillmore County Republican Chairman Doug Baker is speaking out against endorsed 1st District Republican primary winner Jim Hagedorn.
In an eight-paragraph letter-to-the-editor emailed to the Post-Bulletin, Baker said Hagedorn does not deserve the party's endorsement after he went back on his pledge to abide by the endorsement. Initially, Hagedorn had agreed to abide by the party's endorsement process and dropped out of the race after Republicans endorsed Byron Army veteran Aaron Miller in April. But six weeks later, the Blue Earth Republican re-entered the race, saying Miller wasn't running an aggressive enough campaign. He pulled off an upset victory last week, defeating Miller for the chance to take on 1st District DFL Rep. Tim Walz in November.
"Let me get this straight. We want to reward the guy who lied right to our faces, wasted our time and money and widened the rift in the district by wasting more time and money to give him the very thing he thought lowly enough to ignore four months ago," Baker wrote. . . .
Read the whole thing at the Rochester Post Bulletin. Carlson reports that most activists she spoke to will support Hagedorn, although there's been some residual frostiness.
Bluestem has seen a copy of the email. One thing that Baker mentioned on Monday was the offensive Mr. Conservative content, writing:
. . .A quick google search and you will find Jim's bigoted comments against Native Americans and women. Are you wondering why you never heard about that? Obviously Aaron Miller never used those items against Jim because Aaron is an honorable man who didn't go negative, even though it would have guaranteed the win for him.
Bluestem has to wonder whether Republican primary voters conducted google searches before casting their ballots and didn't care--or whether a majority simply was so overwhelmed by Jim Hagedorn's aggressive charm that they felt they had no choice but to cast their ballots for him.
Josh Moniz at the Mankato Free Press has published the most in-depth look at the Hagedorn win in Analysis: Hagedorn went west for primary win.
Photo: The Winona Republican Party field office still displayed a sign for Aaron Miller on August 21, over a week after Jim Hagedorn defeated him in the August 12. Our source tells us the sign is still up on Saturday,
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