State Rep. Jeremy Munson leads all candidates in fundraising for the special Republican primary for the open congressional seat of the late U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn, including his widow Jennifer Carnahan, but only because Munson lent his campaign $200,000 of his own money.
Friday was the deadline for filing congressional campaign disclosures with the Federal Elections Commission for the first quarter. They show that Munson had raised $302,234 including his loan, spent $5,090 and had 297,144 left in the bank as of March 31st for the May 24th special primary.
Carnahan, a former Minnesota GOP state chair, was further back with the other Republican candidates, who are all portraying themselves as staunch conservatives. They’ve all scrambled to get organized since the Blue Earth Republican died of kidney cancer on February 18th. The winners of the primary will run in a special general election August 9th to fill out the rest of Hagedorn’s term. The November election will determine who get the seat in southern Minnesota’s 1st District after that.