Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R-Minn.) died Thursday evening following a bout with kidney cancer, his wife confirmed on social media. He was 59.
Hagedorn, a former blogger, was elected to represent Minnesota’s 1st District in 2018 following three unsuccessful bids for Congress.
In the wake of the Capitol Hill attack last year, he joined scores of his fellow Republicans in voting against the impeachment of President Donald Trump, weeks after he’d voted against the formal certification of Joe Biden’s election win. Hagedorn’s voting record in Congress reliably reflected Trump’s positions.
Hagedorn was diagnosed with cancer in 2019 and had received treatments at a Mayo Clinic hospital that initially went well, his office said. He underwent a successful surgery to remove his kidney and surrounding cancerous tissue in late 2020.
“Jim loved our country and loved representing the people of southern Minnesota,” Hagedorn’s wife, former Minnesota Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan, wrote on Facebook.
“There was no stronger conservative in our state than my husband; and it showed in how he voted, led and fought for our country,” she wrote.
Between 2002 and 2008, Hagedorn ran a now-deleted blog, “Mr. Conservative,” where he posted sexist and racist commentary as well as homophobic innuendo and anti-Native American sentiment. Hagedorn told The Associated Press in 2014 that the blog was meant to be humorous and satirical.
In one 2005 post, Hagedorn wrote that President George W. Bush had selected a female Supreme Court nominee to “fill the bra of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.” Another post described Washington state’s two senators, Patty Murray (D) and Maria Cantwell (D), as “undeserving bimbos in tennis shoes.”
In 2008, Hagedorn thanked Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for choosing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin ― whom he called “the feisty Caribou Barbie” ― as his running mate. “On behalf of all red-blooded American men,” Hagedorn wrote, “THANK YOU SENATOR McCAIN, SARAH’S HOT!”
In 2014, he offered an apology for his blog posts, writing on Facebook: “I do acknowledge that some of my hard-hitting and tongue-in-cheek commentary was less than artfully constructed or included language that could lead to hurt feelings. I offer a sincere and heartfelt apology.”
The Trump era seemed to offer Hagedorn a more agreeable atmosphere. During his 2018 campaign, he told Roll Call: “If someone wants to run a political correctness and identity politics campaign against us, we’ll see what happens.”