Minnesota Not-So-Nice: State Checkbook Omits Reasons for Payments to Private Companies, Nonprofits, Including Those Led by Walz Donors

As we checked for pay-to-play, Chauvin’s prosecutor, Carter-Mondale kin, and trans activists all made special appearances in the checkbook.

Sep 07, 2024

Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’s net worth was estimated to be as low as $112,000 during his first term as governor of Minnesota. His campaign finances while running for re-election were not quite so modest, nor is his growing profile on the national stage. That prompted us to take a look at Minnesota’s state checkbook — all of its line-item spending. We cross-referenced it with donor files to check for potential pay-to-play arrangements.

Instead, we also found a lack of transparency about the purpose for each spending item.

In effect, the checkbook produced through a FOIA request is just a stack of checks with “????” in the Memo line!

THE BIG NUMBER

Between 2019 and 2022, Gov. Walz accepted at least $890,000 in campaign donations from individuals working for at least 434 different Minnesota vendors, auditors at OpenTheBooks found. Those same companies collected nearly $15 billion in payments from the state between 2019 and 2023.

CEOs, presidents, vice presidents and other executives from at least 86 of the companies were among the Walz campaign donors.

THROWBACK: OpenTheBooks.com maintains checkbooks for all 50 states, and occasionally does a deep dive. Last year, California’s checkbook unspooled a series of stories about the influence of First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and large corporate donors to both her nonprofit and Governor Newsom’s campaigns. You can read more here.

BREATHING ROOM FOR DONORS

Federal contractors (LLC’s, sole proprietors and individuals) are banned from donating to campaigns because of the potential for “political influence or coercion.” No such law exists in Minnesota for state elections.

Unfortunately, the state checkbook produced for OpenTheBooks.com through an open records request does not distinguish which payments were contracts versus grants, legal settlements or other spending. In fact, the rationales for all its payments are left out of the records.

While it’s not the type politicians routinely bemoan, it seems like Minnesota has its own sort of dark money.

The Minnesota governor’s office and the Harris-Walz campaign did not return requests for comment on this article.

Walz finished his re-election campaign with over $627,000 cash on hand as of Dec. 31, 2023. State candidates are barred from using leftover campaign funds on federal elections, but it would be legal for Walz to refund the contributions and ask donors to send the money back to the Harris-Walz campaign.

Here are some of the companies whose employees and executives gave campaign cash to Gov. Walz and separately received state payments.

Major Corporations

Target Corporation received $132,024 of state business while Walz was governor, according to the state checkbook Separately, then-Chief External Officer Laysha Ward and other employees donated $12,447 to Walz’s campaign.

Walz also took $8,987 in donations from employees at Fortune 500 manufacturing company 3M, including three executives, such as Chief Diversity Officer Ann Anaya. The Minnesota-based company received $191,000 of state business under Walz’s administration.

Many large bank chains have blocked employees from donating to the Harris-Walz presidential campaign out of fear of violating federal “pay-to-play” rules. No such restraint was shown in Minnesota when Walz ran for governor.

Wells Fargo employees donated $8,090 to Walz’s campaign, and separately the bank got $266.6 million of state money. U.S. Bank received just over $1 billion from the state, and its employees donated $3,925. Bremer Bank employees donated $1,485 and also received almost $11.7 million from the state.

None of that is to say the donations are one-sided.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics recently called out 3M, U.S. Bank and other Minnesota-based corporations for donating to Republican candidates who disputed the results of the 2020 election, even after the companies promised not to.

Smaller Companies, LLCs, Nonprofits and Law firms

Searching through smaller entities produced a who’s-who of news-making figures.

Law firm Blackwell Burke received $197,455 from Minnesota and donated $4,750 to Walz, mostly from co-founder Jerry Blackwell and his wife Tiffany. Jerry Blackwell was one of the prosecutors who helped convict Derek Chauvin of murder for the death of George Floyd. President Biden later appointed him to a district judgeship.

Dorsey Whitney LLP employees donated $19,982 to Walz, including over $8,000 from four of the law firm’s partners. The firm also took in nearly $483,000 from the State of Minnesota.

A group of Mortenson Construction employees, including President Derek Cunz, donated $5,500 to Walz. The company took in $4.9 million from the state during Walz’s time as governor.

Donors from agricultural company Cargill, Inc. included three executives. They donated $4,350 and the company received over $550,000 of state money. Nevertheless, Cargill is opening a new office in Atlanta instead of expanding in Minnesota, which has become a trend for businesses in the state.

Employees at computer consultants Atomic Data donated $5,500, including $2,250 from Ted Mondale, the head of new business development and government relations. Mondale is a former Democratic state senator and the son of Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter’s vice president. Atomic Data received $169,310 from Walz’s administration.

Kinsale Communications received $160,583 in state spending, even though the company doesn’t have an active website that can easily be found online. An unclaimed LinkedIn page says the group only has two to 10 employees. President Steve Kinsella and his family members donated $3,000 to Walz’s campaign.

The State of Minnesota has sent over $5 million to Great River Energy since 2019, which recently purchased the “world’s biggest battery” being built with federal funds. Their President/CEO David Saggau donated $4,000 to Walz’s campaign, and Vice President Eric Olsen donated $1,000.

Mark Lanterman, a former member of the U.S. Secret Service Electronic Crimes Taskforce who has trained members of the federal judiciary in Washington, D.C., donated $4,000 to the Walz campaign. He’s the chief technology officer of Computer Forensic Services, which received $134,384 in state spending.

CASE STUDY: Take a deeper look at a legal settlement that sent trans-identifying Christina Lusk to women’s prison and billed taxpayers for hormone treatments and reassignment surgery. A progressive nonprofit called “Gender Justice,” which advocates for trans equality, partnered with law firm Robins Kaplan LLP to sue the MN Department of Corrections. Lawyers from Robins Kaplan donated more than $24,000 to the Walz campaign since 2019, and Gender Justice has a board member working in the Walz administration at the Department of Human Services. The parties negotiated in private arbitration a $495,000 settlement, with the state agreeing to pay Lusk damages and follow controversial care standards from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). The policy change came without any input from the legislature.
The New York Post exclusively reported the new details of the arrangement. READ MORE

METHODOLOGY

All donors to Tim Walz’s gubernatorial re-election campaign fund were required to list their employer in files disclosed by the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board. Our auditors matched the employers to a list of companies that received checks from the State of Minnesota during Walz’s time in office, obtained through an open records request.

It’s nearly impossible to identify which transactions, if any, represent potential conflicts of interest. The checkbook Minnesota provided to our auditors doesn’t specify whether funds are grants, contracts, legal settlements or other spending. It contains only company names and dollar values, with no descriptions of what the state spent money on.

While the state hosts a transparency portal, it’s insufficient for taxpayers seeking a broad look at the state’s spending priorities. Users must start by searching for a specific agency or private vendor and then are given a set of abbreviated spending codes. Exporting a large data file yields the same two columns produced to OpenTheBooks.com through FOIA: a long list of vendors and dollar amounts, without explanation for the spending.

Examples of potential conflicts of interest are the 41 employees from the Mayo Clinic who donated $38,650 to Walz’s campaign, while the hospital system received $415.7 million from Walz’s administration. That’s not necessarily a conflict; the hospital is one of the largest in the country and uses state money for vital medical research.

Similarly, Allina Health, a large Minnesota health care system, had employees, including current CEO Lisa Shannon and former CEO Penny Wheeler, donate $26,500 to the Walz coffers, while collecting $146 million from the state.

But if, for example, Mayo’s lobbying agenda gets special preference over others, that’s relevant to taxpayers. Randy Schubring, who donated $1,350, serves as one of Mayo Clinic’s liaisons with the state government.

CONCLUSION

As Tim Walz comes under the national spotlight, the State of Minnesota should be far more forthcoming about how and why it spends its taxpayer money. While there’s not enough evidence to confirm any “pay-to-play" activity, a look through the checkbook demonstrates how funding decisions can signal an administration’s values and priorities, and even precipitate serious policy change.

Minnesota is the Gopher State, but a peek into the sun still never hurts. In the case of the state checkbook, dramatically more sunlight is needed — not just for Minnesotans but for federal taxpayers considering a Harris-Walz administration.

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