U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn, a Blue Earth Republican who followed in his father’s footsteps into Congress, died Thursday night after a battle with kidney cancer. He was 59.
Hagedorn’s wife, Jennifer Carnahan, said in a Facebook post Friday that Hagedorn “passed away peacefully last night.” Hagedorn was diagnosed with stage VI kidney cancer in February 2019, shortly after he began his first term and just a couple months after he married Carnahan, then state chairwoman for the Minnesota Republican Party.
He underwent immunotherapy at the Mayo Clinic. The treatment knocked back his cancer enough that doctors felt safe taking out his affected kidney in 2020, which he said removed an estimated 99% of the cancer in his body. But he announced in July 2021 that his cancer had returned.