Fed up with attacks, Minnesota Republicans wage war against far-right group

Top officials in the Minnesota Republican Party recently gathered to take an unprecedented vote: formally condemning a right-wing group that has antagonized GOP elected officials for years.

Action 4 Liberty was repeatedly attacking Republicans in the divided Minnesota House for compromising with Democrats, while also encouraging “grassroots Patriots” to oust party officers at local conventions and replace them with hardline activists.

The state GOP’s executive committee declared that leaders of Action 4 Liberty are more focused on “tearing down Republicans” than helping the party win elections: “The leadership of the organization instead works only to enrich themselves, attack those actually making a difference, and claim victories they had nothing to do with,” read the declaration brought forward by committee member Bobby Benson, who’s the state chief of staff for Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer.

The rebuke was the culmination of years of pent-up frustration toward Action 4 Liberty, a group that has deeply embedded itself in Minnesota Republican politics and is trying to reshape the party from the bottom up.

Jake Duesenberg, Action 4 Liberty’s founder, quickly fired back: “What a pathetic move to kowtow to ‘Globalist RINO’ Tom Emmer’s people and attack the state’s largest, grassroots conservative organization.”

Action 4 Liberty has enlisted grassroots activists across the state in its effort to push the GOP further to the right, telling them to seek party positions and primary incumbent lawmakers. Its success has varied over the years, with many of its candidates losing primary battles to more moderate Republicans. But last year, the group rallied activists who ousted state GOP Chair David Hann, endorsed far-right Republican Royce White for U.S. Senate and blocked GOP U.S. Rep. Michelle Fischbach from winning the party’s endorsement.

Preya Samsundar, a GOP operative in Minnesota who previously worked for the Republican National Committee, said Action 4 Liberty has become a problem that can no longer be ignored.

“They’re making incremental moves that are giving them more and more power,” Samsundar said. “If things don’t get fixed and A4L isn’t crushed … they’re going to cause a lot of problems for a lot of people. And as we already know, their brand of conservatism does not get elected in this state. They will move Minnesota further to the left.”

The scope of Action 4 Liberty’s influence in Minnesota is hard to measure.

Action 4 Liberty has an associated political action committee, but it runs minimal spending through it, instead operating mostly in its capacity as a nonprofit. Its nonprofit status allows it to conceal its donors, and it doesn’t have to specify what it spends money on.

In 2023, Action 4 Liberty reported $269,000 in revenue, almost all from “contributions and grants,” according to its most recently filed tax form. Its expenses totaled about $300,000, including more than $198,000 for “field operations” and about $83,000 for “management.”

It’s unclear how many volunteers Action 4 Liberty has. The group’s 2023 tax form states it has 100 volunteers. Duesenberg, meanwhile, wrote on LinkedIn that “our organization has over 50 business partners and over a thousand activists in Minnesota.”

Critics of Action 4 Liberty have long accused its leaders of being “grifters," pointing to Duesenberg’s high compensation in proportion to overall revenue. In 2022, Action 4 Liberty reported nearly $425,000 in revenue, out of which Duesenberg was paid about $118,000.

“They’re an organization that has no accountability,” Hann said in an interview. “They have no requirement to publicly acknowledge who they get money from or what they spend money on. My understanding is that the money they raise largely is used to pay themselves.”

Asked to respond to the allegation, Duesenberg, who only would answer questions via email, said, “I think the actual grift is when RINO legislators tell us they want less government spending, but then spend like drunken sailors with our tax money.”

As a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) nonprofit, the group is allowed to participate in political activity as long as politics isn’t its main purpose. Action 4 Liberty has pushed that boundary, openly touting its efforts to “lead a conservative offense at the Capitol” and “recruit conservative candidates for the legislature and equip them to win their elections.”

Erik Mortensen, Action 4 Liberty’s president, maintained the group is “not an electioneering organization.”

“We simply educate liberty-loving Minnesotans on the actions of their elected officials and candidates as well as train Minnesotans how to wield their political power. How our supporters wield that power is up to them,” Mortensen said in an email exchange. He declined an interview request.

Mortensen took credit for ousting Hann from his state GOP leadership position in December. As for White and Fischbach, he said, “I suspect our educational efforts about Fischbach and many other races played a significant role.”

In more recent victories, Action 4 Liberty compelled the state Republican Party to reveal the identity of an unknown vendor it paid tens of thousands of dollars to last year: The party said it was Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota GOP who endorsed Kamala Harris over Donald Trump.

And two candidates backed by Action 4 Liberty were just elected to the same GOP executive committee that condemned the organization weeks earlier.

“The very people who the Establishment … want to disenfranchise and purge from the party are the ones who are getting elected to the highest echelon of the party leadership!" Action 4 Liberty declared last week.

After largely ignoring Action 4 Liberty the past few years, GOP officials are going on the offensive.

State Rep. Walter Hudson, R-Albertville, is leading the charge, calling on the Minnesota Republican Party to “cut out the cancer” of Action 4 Liberty and disqualify its affiliates from party activity.

Before he was elected to the Minnesota House in 2022, Hudson said he attended some Action 4 Liberty training and was personal friends with Duesenberg. His feelings toward the group changed after he joined the Legislature and got a “crash course on how the legislative process actually works.”

Action 4 Liberty embraces a confrontational approach to politics that doesn’t work in practice, Hudson said.

“It’s, ‘you’re going to do what I want, when I want, how I want, exactly how I ask, or I’m gonna take a proverbial stick and beat you over the head with it. I’m going to primary you,‘” he said.

Mortensen said every single Republican in the Minnesota House “deserves to be primaried in 2026″ for not supporting Action 4 Liberty’s signature bill called the Never Again Act. The bill would repeal the governor’s ability to call a peacetime emergency, making it harder to issue COVID-style shutdown orders.

Hudson said nothing Republican lawmakers do is good enough for Action 4 Liberty. When Republicans reached an agreement with Democrats in the tied House to trim the state budget, Action 4 Liberty criticized them for not making deeper cuts. The group also slammed GOP lawmakers for striking a power-sharing deal with Democrats, despite it being necessary for the House to function.

“Their entire purpose for existing is to manufacture outrage against Republicans so that they can fundraise, so that they can pay themselves to continue to manufacture outrage,” Hudson said.

Critics have also taken issue with Action 4 Liberty’s incendiary approach. On social media, Mortensen has made fun of state legislators’ weight and hurled expletives at former GOP senators.

Last month, Minnesota GOP Secretary Joy Orvis accused Mortensen of trying to intimidate her at the party’s executive committee meeting — an allegation Mortensen denied.

Hudson said that Mortensen, who previously served one term in the Minnesota House, is Action 4 Liberty’s ideal Republican.

“He was elected, he came here for one term, he tore the joint apart, threw stones at everybody, never built a relationship,” Hudson said. “Didn’t get bills heard, didn’t get bills passed and then was done.”

Mortensen countered that if Action 4 Liberty’s efforts are “as ineffective as the establishment claims, they would simply ignore us.”

“The fact that the MNGOP took the time to condemn A4L is all anyone needs to know about our influence in Minnesota,” he said.

There was a point when some Minnesota Republicans were ready to put grudges against Action 4 Liberty aside in an attempt to unify against Democrats.

Action 4 Liberty, to some extent, was a problem of the party’s own making, said Samsundar, the GOP operative. Minnesota’s Republican Party had struggled financially over the years, and Action 4 Liberty “filled a hole where the party had failed” in galvanizing grassroots activists, she said.

The group elevated concerns from grassroots activists that were sometimes ignored by the party, such as questioning the neutrality of GOP congressional district conventions that were overseen by staffers for Emmer and Fischbach.

In contrast, a spokesman for the Minnesota DFL said that “to our knowledge, no DFL Convention has been helmed by a staffer for a contested Congressional candidate in the last several election cycles.”

But as Action 4 Liberty has amassed more power, Samsundar said they’ve been “going around and screwing everything up,” encouraging primary challenges against popular incumbents such as Fischbach and boosting far-right candidates such as White who have less statewide appeal.

After White won the Senate endorsement last year, Samsundar, who worked for White’s GOP primary opponent, said she warned Republicans in Minnesota’s congressional delegation that Action 4 Liberty could come for them next. Mortensen recently encouraged White to “Primary Emmer!” — even though White doesn’t live in Emmer’s district.

Minnesota’s GOP legislative caucuses and congressmembers have told the state party’s new leaders to take a firmer stance on Action 4 Liberty, or risk having funding cut off.

State GOP chair Alex Plechash, whom anti-establishment activists chose to replace Hann, had invited individuals from Action 4 Liberty to attend Trump’s inauguration in January. When the executive committee voted in March to condemn Action 4 Liberty, Plechash made a point to say that he abstained.

Plechash struck a different tone when asked earlier this month whether he agreed with the condemnation. He touted the party’s “strong relationship” with Minnesota’s GOP congressmembers and their staff, and said the party’s official position on Action 4 Liberty is reflected in the executive committee resolution.

“Those who divide us or attack Republican officials without merit are helping the Democrats, not the conservative cause,” Plechash said.