- First-term Rep. Jim Hagedorn faces Democrat Dan Feehan in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District.
- The two candidates previously competed against each other in the 2018 midterms, where Hagedorn defeated Feehan by just 0.4 percentage points.
- The district is located along Minnesota’s southern border and flipped from backing former President Barack Obama in 2012 to voting for President Trump in 2016.
- Polls closed at 8 p.m. local time.
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First-term Rep. Jim Hagedorn looks to defend his seat against Democratic challenger Dan Feehan in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District.
The two candidates previously faced off in 2018, where Hagedorn defeated Feehan by just 0.4 percentage points.
The candidates
Hagedorn, the son of former Minnesota Rep. Tom Hagedorn, is the former Director for Legislative and Public Affairs for the Financial Management Service for the US Treasury.
He has run to represent the district in every election year since 2010 except for 2012, finally succeeding in his narrow 2018 victory over Feehan in the open race to replace now-Governor Tim Walz. Minnesota’s 1st District was one of the few to flip from Democratic to Republican hands in the Democratic wave year of 2018.
From 2002 to 2008, Hagedorn ran an online blog, Mr. Conservative, which included remarks that became a subject of controversy in his election campaign.
Hagedorn referred to two female senators as “undeserving bimbos in tennis shoes” and referred to a former House Republican’s alleged abuse victim as “white trash.”
“Over the years, I wrote political commentary … and poked fun at national politicians,” Hagedorn said to the Star Tribune in 2014. “This is old stuff that’s been out there for years.”
In Congress, Hagedorn serves on the powerful Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Small Business. Hagedorn has been fighting kidney cancer for almost his entire first term in Congress, and says that his experience with cancer treatment “has moved him to prioritize policies to facilitate the development of biopharmaceutical cures to treat people with serious diseases” and “protect access to southern Minnesota’s world-class medical care.”
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Feehan is a US Army veteran who served in two separate combat tours in Iraq. After returning from overseas, Feehan went on to serve as the assistant secretary of defense for the US Department of Defense.
Feehan is running his campaign on a platform of expanding affordable healthcare and lowering prescription drug costs, strengthening the country’s agricultural economy, and protecting Social Security and Medicare.
The district
Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District runs alongside the state’s southern border, and includes both cities and rural farmland. The district is home to the major cities of Rochester, Mankato, Blue Earth, and New Ulm.
The district flipped from narrowly backing former President Barack Obama by 1.4 percentage points in 2012 to voting for President Donald Trump by a substantial margin in 2016. During the 2016 presidential election, the district voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton in a 53-38% split, according to Daily Kos.
The money race
Minnesota’s 1st District is one of the relatively few House races where the challenger has substantially outraised the incumbent. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Feehan has raised over $4.3 million, spent nearly $3.7 million, and has around $610,000 in cash on while Hagedorn has raised about $2.2 million, spent over $2 million, and has around $160,000 in cash on hand.
What experts say
The race between Hagedorn and Feehan is rated as a “tossup” by The Cook Political Report, “tilts Democratic” by Inside Elections, and “leans Democratic” by Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
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