MINNEAPOLIS — The state chair of the Republican Party, Jennifer Carnahan, called a meeting of the party’s executive committee to discuss a metastasizing scandal that began erupting last week with two arrests alleging a sex trafficking of minor girls. The meeting will be Thursday. Carnahan’s position as state party chair may be on the line. She has had detractors in the party even before her 2017 election as chair. Now with FBI charges that a close associate, party donor Anton Lazarro, has been running a sex ring, there has been a crescendoing call for Carnahan to be replaced.
Carnahan. State GOP chair. Her job on the line?
Carnhan profile
Carnahan was left on the back doorstep of a rural hospital in South Korea in 1976. She was adopted by an American family from the northwest Minneapolis suburb of Osseo. She holds a 1999 degree in communication from Syracuse University and a 2010 master’s in business from the University of Minnesota. Her career began in brand-marketing with McDonald’s, General Mills and Ecolab. In 2013 she co-hosted a fundraising event for Minneapolis Democrat Jacob Frey, a Democrat running for the Minneapolis City Council. Later Frey became mayor. In 2016 Carnahan switched her affiliation to Republican. She was a delegate to the 2016 GOP national convention, which nominated Donald Trump for president. That same year she ran for State Senate but lost. In 2017 she was elected state Republican chair, the first Asian-American to hold the position. The party’s motto: motto under Carnahan was “Make Minnesota Red.” It was not a good year for Republicans. The party lost both U.S. Senate races and all state constitution offices. In 2018 she married James Hagedorn, a three-term, member of Congress from southern Minnesota. In 2020 Carnahan’s Republican Party lost statewide races and had no gain in Congress but managed to make inroads against the Democratic majority State House. There was no gain in the State Senate. About the election setbacks, Carnahan blamed “extreme abnormalities statistical variations.” Journalistic fact checking found her charges obfuscating — off-base, vague and flat-out wrong.
Carnahan’s GOP problems
How Carnahan’s fell from favor among Republican loyalists:
January 2017:A fter losing a close State Senate race, she said: “We can’t keep putting up the same white 60-year-old guy to speak about our values, if they say that’s identity politics then that’s too.”
> June 2018: She claimed that Republicans were racist and sexist toward her. About sexism, she claimed that the party power structure said she deserved to make less money than her male predecessors. After shaming party elders, however, she received a higher salary plus controversial bonuses for each major donation to the party.
> January 2021: Carnahan proclaimed claimed the party paid off all its “legacy debt.” Unstated was that the party still had $255,030 in debt.
>April 2021: Party elders were upset to learn that Carnahan had pledged large percentages of fundraising dollars to a Virginia vendor rather than the state party. Of the $202,000 raised by the Minnesota Republican Party online, $103,000 went to WinRed, which passed most pf it on to IMGE LLC of Alexandria, Virginia. Max Rymer, a Republican National Committee member from Minnesota, said the company had little to do with raising much of the money,
> April 2021: Carnahan was re-elected t chair of Republican Party of Minnesota by 67%, but her tactics were challenged by her riuval for the jib, State Senator Mark Koran.He alleged that Carnahan’s staff had manipulated the state party convention to tilt the scales to Carnahan’s way. Carnahan backers countered there was no proof. Even so, a sour taste was left in the mouths of many party faithful.
> August 2021: A a federal grand jury indicted Anton Lazzaro, a prominent Republican political operative in Minnesota, on child sex-trafficking charges. Carnahan condemned Lazzaro’s alleged actions. Lazzaro had been part of a team that helped Carnahan successfully campaign for the state party chair.