Now in his 17th term, DFL state representative Gene Pelowski has been fined $1000 by the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board for using political donor dollars to pay for $3,976.27 in rent, furniture and utilities at his St. Paul apartment.
Pelowski must pay the money back to his campaign committee, Torey Van Oot reports in Minnesota lawmaker ordered to repay campaign for nearly $4,000 in living costs at the Star Tribune:
A longtime DFL state legislator from Winona has been fined and must repay his campaign nearly $4,000 after using political donor dollars to pay for rent, furniture and utilities at his St. Paul apartment.
A review by the state Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board found that Rep. Gene Pelowski used his campaign fund, The Pelowski Volunteer Committee, to cover $3,976.27 in living costs between 2017 and 2019.
Expenditures included a $802 payment to Quality Furniture Rental, $631 for security deposits and parking fees and hundreds of dollars more in utility bills. According to annual campaign finance filings, Pelowski also used the contributor funds to pay for his December 2018 rent at The Penfield, a luxury building just blocks from the State Capitol in downtown St. Paul.
Those items caught the attention of staff at the campaign watchdog agency, which launched a review of the spending in April. State statute prohibits use of political fund money for personal purposes. . .
Pelowski's campaign finance reports can be accessed here.
An aside about Pelowski's district
Will Pelowski feel any electoral heat following the fine and punishment? Unlikely.
He's running without opposition in House District 28A in the November 3 General Election. He ran without opposition in 2018 as well.
In 2017, David Montgomery calculated how liberal or conservative each MN representative voted this year for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, discovering in the case of Pelowski:
As partisan as the Minnesota House is — and a Pioneer Press analysis found it is very partisan — a number of Republicans and Democrats broke through the voting ranks and landed in the middle this year.
Moderate Republican Reps. Dario Anselmo of Edina and Keith Franke of St. Paul Park crossed party lines enough that they had more in common with moderate DFLers like Winona’s Rep. Gene Pelowski and Dilworth’s Rep. Paul Marquart than with conservative stalwarts like Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa.
Montgomery also looked at 2016 presidential votes in state house districts. Pelowski's district went for Hillary Clinton
In 2018, the DFL swept all state and federal offices on the ballot in the Winona district. The Minnesota Senate seat, held by Republican Jeremy Miller, was not on the ballot.
Regardless of that tilt, Pelowski was one of two DFL House members to vote to end Walz's emergency powers in the June special session.
He did the same in the July special session, in the August special session, and in the latest special last Friday.
So it goes.
Photo: Gene Pelowski, DFL-Winona.
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