Representative Jim Hagedorn, a second-term Republican from Minnesota who was a staunch ally of former President Donald J. Trump and who, along with other members of his party, sought the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. undo, passed away on Thursday. He was 59.
His wife, Jennifer Carnahan Hagedorn, the former chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, announced the death on Facebook. She did not specify the cause or say where he died. He had long been public about his three-year battle with cancer, announcing in January that he had tested positive for Covid-19.
Mr Hagedorn was diagnosed with stage IV kidney cancer in 2019, shortly after he was sworn in as a first-term member of the House of Representatives. He underwent immunotherapy treatment at the Mayo Clinic, and doctors removed the affected kidney in December 2020. He said at the time that 99 percent of the cancer was gone, but he announced in July that it had returned.
Hagedorn had unsuccessfully run for a seat in the House three times, in 2010, 2014 and 2016, when he narrowly lost to incumbent Democrat Tim Walz. In 2018, after Mr. Walz left to successfully run for governor, Mr. Hagedorn narrowly won his seat in a race against Democrat Dan Feehan.
In a rematch against Mr Feehan in 2020, Mr Hagedorn won by a slightly larger margin despite his health problems, raising funds ahead of a re-election campaign in November.
“He will forever be known as a common-sense conservative who advocated for fair tax policies, American energy independence, peace through strong foreign policy, and Southern Minnesota’s way of life and values,” his campaign said in a statement.
During his short tenure, Republicans were outnumbered in the House. All the while, Mr. Hagedorn remained a strong conservative, working on behalf of small businesses and rural entrepreneurs, and standing as an ally to Mr. Trump, who won Mr. Hagedorn’s district by 15 percentage points in 2016.
“I have said repeatedly since 2016 that I naturally support Donald Trump,” Mr Hagedorn told the Minnesota newspaper The Star Tribune in 2019, “because I felt that if he had lost, we would have lost the country.”
In December 2020, Mr. Hagedorn was one of 126 Republican members of the House who submitted an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to undo Mr Biden’s election as president, an order based on false and refuted allegations of widespread voter fraud. The court dismissed the lawsuit, which had sought to throw out election results in four battlefield states.
Just hours after the deadly Uprising in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by a mob of Trump supporters, Mr. Hagedorn was one of 147 Republicans who objected to certifying Mr. Biden’s election.
“There was no stronger conservative in our state than my husband,” his wife wrote in her statement, “and it showed how he voted, led and fought for our country.”
James Lee Hagedorn was born on August 4, 1962 in Blue Earth, Minnesota, near the Iowa border. His father, Tom Hagedorn, was a member of the U.S. House and represented part of the same southern Minnesota area that his son later did. His mother, Kathleen (Mittlestadt) Hagedorn, was a housewife.
Jim grew up on the family farm near Truman, Minn., and in McLean, Virginia, while his father served in Congress from 1975 to 1983.
He graduated from George Mason University in Virginia in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in government and political science. While in college, he worked as a legislative assistant to Representative Arlan Stangeland, another Republican from Minnesota. He later worked as a congressional liaison at the Department of Finance and until 2009 as a congressional officer for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
During the early 2000s, Mr. Hagedorn has a blog called “Mr. Conservative,” which has since been deleted. His posts included Native Americans, gays, and women.
In 2005, when President George W. Bush nominated a woman, White House counsel Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court (she eventually withdrew her name), Mr. Hagedorn described her nomination as an attempt “to change the bra of Justice.” of the Supreme Court”. Sandra Day O’Connor.”
The blog posts resurfaced during Mr Hagedorn’s failed bid for the House in 2014; he told The Star Tribune that they were old and satirical in nature. They resurfaced in 2018, when he won the seat primarily by proclaiming his loyalty to Mr Trump.
Complete information about his survivors was not available.
The last piece of legislation Mr Hagedorn introduced on February 9 was a resolution to put a national debt clock in the House.
“The American people deserve full transparency on this country’s fiscal affairs,” he said, “and this resolution will strongly remind lawmakers to vote on proposals that could put our country even more in debt.”