Star Tribune reports MNGOP offered 3rd party candidate $15K to act as a spoiler in another congressional race
Earlier this week, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Minnesota Republicans recruited a fake 3rd party candidate to pull votes from DFLers and promised him $15,000 if he jumped in the race. According to the Star Tribune:
In a May 20 voice-mail message provided to the Star Tribune, Weeks told a childhood friend that Republicans in the Second District approached him two weeks before the filing deadline to run for Congress in the hopes he’d “pull votes away” from incumbent DFL Rep. Angie Craig and deliver them to the “other guy,” Tyler Kistner, the Republican-endorsed candidate.
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In the voice-mail message, he said he didn’t have any funding to run a campaign, but Republicans were offering him $15,000. It’s not a lot, Weeks acknowledged, “but it’s enough to make door knocks with.”
The report comes after multiple credible and independent reports have exposed a potentially fraudulent scheme by Republicans to recruit and install a third-party ‘Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis’ and ‘Legalize Marjiuana Now’ candidates as part of an effort to siphon votes from competitive Democratic contenders across Minnesota.
In light of these disturbing development, the Minnesota Republican Party – which is run by Congressman Jim Hagedorn’s wife – must come clean about whether they also recruited Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party candidate Bill Rood specifically to hurt Dan Feehan in his tight race against Rep. Hagedorn. In an indication of his affiliation with the Republican party, Bill Rood is on the record saying he hopes President Trump wins in a ‘landslide’ and saying that he voted for Jim Hagedorn in 2018.
“The facts speak for themselves: Minnesota Republicans cooked up an appalling and potentially illegal scheme to cheat in this election to help their own candidates. Chairwoman Carnahan must immediately come clean about whether her party encouraged, recruited, or paid Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party candidate Bill Rood to run in Minnesota’s first congressional district. Less than a week from Election Day, the residents of southern Minnesota deserve to know the truth about the candidates they are voting for,” said DCCC Spokesperson Brooke Goren.
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