Pete Stauber once used his St. Louis County e-mail to seek damaging information about U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan's voting history and forwarded negative information about another potential opponent to a Republican operative in Washington, according to e-mails released Tuesday by the county.
After arguing for months that the e-mails were private, St. Louis County was forced to release them after Judge Stoney Hiljus ordered the county to do so.
Stauber, the Republican nominee for Congress in the Eighth District, is a St. Louis County commissioner. He used his county e-mail to communicate with the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), which is the election arm of the House GOP caucus in Washington.
In his ruling, Hiljus decided in favor of the Minnesota DFL, which sued the county to get the e-mails after it rejected a Star Tribune request for the records earlier this year.
Stauber, a retired police officer, is in a tight race with Democrat Joe Radinovich, a former state House member. Nolan, a Democrat, is retiring at the end of his term. The district includes Duluth and northeastern Minnesota but stretches down to the northern exurbs of the Twin Cities.
Caroline Tarwid, a spokeswoman for Stauber, said he "respects the court's decision and the process just as he did when the county looked into this matter and found no wrongdoing."
The e-mails do not contain the kind of bombshell many Democrats hoped for, and in one of them Stauber tells a recipient to use his private e-mail address to communicate instead of his county address.
Still, a few of the e-mails show political activity, despite the St. Louis County's code of conduct, which reads, "Elected officials will not use St. Louis County equipment in support of their own campaigns for re-election, other candidates for public office, or political organizations."