Former Minnesota GOP Chair Jennifer Carnahan wins Nisswa mayoral race, cites grassroots campaign

When she first hit the campaign trail, Jennifer Carnahan didn’t think she had a shot at winning.

But the former Minnesota GOP chair won the Nisswa mayoral race Tuesday night, unseating incumbent John Ryan, who was seeking a third term as mayor. He served on the Nisswa City Council for eight years and ran uncontested in 2022. That’s the year Carnahan moved to Nisswa after years of legal troubles and the death of her husband, U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn, who represented Minnesota’s First Congressional District.

Carnahan earned 54% of the vote to Ryan’s 45%, with all precincts reporting.

“For 11 weeks I went out and door knocked the city four times over,” Carnahan said in a phone interview Wednesday. “There was some unpleasantness at the beginning, but I still kept going because I felt it was important to go to every voter’s door, attempt to meet them if they were home, have a conversation with them, understand what matters to them in Nisswa and introduce myself.”

Throughout her campaign, Carnahan said she encountered racism from some residents in the predominately white lakes community. She said when knocking on doors, some residents told her that she didn’t belong in Nisswa and incorrectly remarked about her being Chinese. Carnahan is Korean-American.

Ryan, 61, has not yet reached out to Carnahan, but he said later this month he will begin the transition of mayoral power — which in Nisswa is a weak mayor system, meaning the mayor is the tiebreaking vote.

“Nisswa will keep moving forward like we always do,” Ryan said when reached by phone Wednesday while working at Grand View Lodge.

“Evidently the majority really wanted her message. ... I think that everything is so politically charged in this country that I don’t think facts matter as much as they used to anymore. I think people want to hear what they want to hear.”

Carnahan, 47, vacationed in Nisswa throughout childhood and it’s where her parents first met and still call home. It’s also where she owns a women’s boutique, Primrose Park, which she first opened in northeast Minneapolis but relocated up north a decade ago.

Since then she has served on the Nisswa Downtown Council and Brainerd Lakes Chamber government relations committee.

The salary for Nisswa mayor is $350 per month.

Her parents, John and Cindy Carnahan, whose family owned lake property in Nisswa for decades, bought a cabin in 1987 and moved to Nisswa in 2016. They met in college while working at Camp Lincoln for Boys and Camp Lake Hubert for Girls, where they both went as kids.

Not long after they got married, they adopted Jennifer, who was born in South Korea. She came to Minnesota in 1977 and attended school in Maple Grove.

Cindy Carnahan said her daughter was so bright that her kindergarten teacher once called to say, “ ‘I don’t know what to do with your daughter. She’s reading the newspaper to the class.’ And I had no idea that she could read the newspaper.”

She believes her daughter was treated unfairly by the GOP Party, which forced Carnahan out as chair in 2021 amid a scandal and allegations that she had created a toxic workplace environment. She had close ties with GOP donor Anton “Tony” Lazzaro, who was convicted in federal court of sex trafficking minors and sentenced last August to 21 years in prison.

Carnahan initially resisted calls to resign, saying the allegations were part of a “coup” by her detractors. She said she had no knowledge of the sexual harassment accusations.

When Hagedorn died after a long battle with kidney cancer in February 2022, she ran for his congressional seat but finished third in a special GOP primary.

Some of Hagedorn’s family members sued Carnahan over money they put toward the late congressman’s medical expenses. A judge ordered her to reimburse the family for more than $20,000. Carnahan said Wednesday that she never paid because the claims were dismissed.

Her legal woes didn’t end there. She sued the Republican Party of Minnesota alleging that her former colleagues had disparaged her in violation of a separation agreement and damaged her ability to get another job.

The Minnesota GOP countersued, alleging Carnahan had “grossly mismanaged” the party and caused substantial damage. Carnahan and the state GOP agreed to drop the lawsuits last November.

Carnahan said her grassroots campaign in the small town paid off.

“People saw my hard work, they saw my energy, they got to meet me for me and realized, you know, the stuff that’s come out about her, this isn’t her, this isn’t the person we met. And I won people over, I think over time, and built their trust and their support and I think that’s what ended up happening.”