Waste of the Day: Walz Campaign Donors Received $15 Billion in State Business

September 30, 2024

By Jeremy Portnoy for RealClearInvestigations

Topline: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accepted $890,000 in campaign donations from employees – including C-suite executives – ­of 434 state vendors between 2019 and 2022, a new report from OpenTheBooks found. 

Those same companies collected nearly $15 billion in payments from the state between 2019 and 2023, according to the state checkbook.

Key facts: The donations all went to Walz’s campaign for reelection as governor of Minnesota and were made before he became the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

CEOs, presidents and other executives of 86 state vendors were among the donors.

Employees of law firm Blackwell Burke donated $4,750 to Walz’s gubernatorial campaign, campaign records show, and separately received almost $200,000 from the state. Co-founder Jerry Blackwell was one of the prosecutors who helped convict Derek Chauvin of murder for the death of George Floyd.

Ted Mondale, the head of new business development and government relations at computer consultants Atomic Data, donated $2,250 to Walz. His company separately received $169,310 from the state. Mondale is a former Democratic state senator and the son of Walter Mondale,  a former U.S. Senator from Minnesota who also served as Jimmy Carter’s vice president.

Kinsale Communications received $160,583 in state spending, even though there’s few online records of the business even existing at all. President Steve Kinsella and his family members donated $3,000 to Walz’s campaign.

Other Walz campaign donors that received state business included Target, General Mills, Fortune 500 manufacturing company 3M, and bank chains like Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank.

Background: It’s nearly impossible to identify which, if any, of the transactions represent actual conflicts of interest. 

The Minnesota checkbook contains only dollar values and a list of companies that received state money. The state ignored OpenTheBooks’ freedom of information request for details of each transaction, even though nearby states like Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota were more transparent.

Walz finished his re-election campaign with more than $627,000 cash on hand as of Dec. 31, 2023. He cannot legally transfer the cash to the Harris-Walz campaign, but he theoretically could refund the contributions and ask donors to send the money back to the presidential ticket.

Summary: It’s likely that many Minnesota vendors would have received state business even without donating to Walz’s campaign — but if any are receiving preferential treatment, taxpayers deserve to know.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.