Curtis Olafson (R-Fargo) photo: olafson4nd.com
FARGO (KFGO) – A former North Dakota State Senate candidate says it took a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to find out campaign mailers that were supposed to be delivered ahead of the 2022 general election were delayed because they went to Boise, Idaho before coming to Fargo.
Curtis Olafson expected 900 mailers targeted to Republican voters in District 10 to be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service by Nov. 2, but about 280 of them didn’t show up to households until at least Nov. 10 – two days after the election.
When Olafson questioned the Postal Service, he said the Prairiewood Branch manager was helpful at first, but within a day or two, the manager stopped responding to him. Olafson was eventually contacted by someone from the Regional Office in Minneapolis who told him some of the mailers, which were all sent by a company in Tennessee, were in a partial sack, separate from the others.
In a response to KFGO News in November, Desai Abdul-Razzaaq with USPS’ corporate communications department said, “Regarding the customer’s political mailing, postal management researched to find that the candidate’s Political Mailing was delivered promptly on arrival in Fargo.”
The mailers were delivered when they arrived in Fargo, but – as Olafson found out through the FOIA request – they went to Boise first.
According to the FOIA documents, the mailers were shipped by a political mailer company who took the mailers to a Post Office in Sunman, Indiana that scanned them in on Oct. 26. From there, the mailers went to Cincinnati where at least some of them stayed until Oct. 30. On Nov. 7, the mailers were scanned in Indianapolis.
From Indianapolis, documents show some of the mailers were scanned in at a Post Office in Boise on Nov. 10.
Those mailers arrived in Fargo on Nov. 12.
Olafson has maintained that all he wanted was an explanation of what happened to the mailers that he says were critically-timed to arrive for early voting, but the Postal Service would only say the mailers were “delivered promptly on arrival in Fargo.”
“[The Postal Service representative] never made any acknowledgement of the fact that a third of the shipment didn’t get here until days after the election,” Olafson said. “He also implied that I was lying about the whole thing.”
Besides Olafson, three news outlets in Fargo – including KFGO – and Sen. John Hoeven made requests for comment from the Postal Service, but all received the same response. That was when Olafson decided to make the FOIA request.
“If he had put out a statement that said, ‘we researched the candidate’s mailer and we found that a mistake had been made and they were misrouted to Boise, Idaho, and we apologize to the candidate, I would have dropped it right there,” Olafson said. “It would have been over.”
Olafson said mistakes happen, and he understands that, but how the mistake was handled is what he is upset about.
“We are all human. We all make mistakes,” Olafson said. “But when we make them, we have to acknowledge them and hold ourselves accountable for them. And, if the situation warrants – and I think this one does – to apologize to your customer.”
Within the 59-page FOIA documents were internal emails between Postal Service management. In an email from Martha Johnson, a Postal Service spokesperson in Washington, D.C., to two other managers regarding Olafson’s mailers, Johnson said it is their policy to never apologize when it comes to election mail.
“Election mail assumes all statements provided to customers end up in the media. We have a very strong policy that we do NOT say we are sorry,” Johnson wrote. “We have NEVER done it in the three years I’ve been working with them. Provide a few niceties, like ‘Hello Mr. Olafson’ and ‘Wishing you a good holiday season,’ but I would also skip that ‘let me know if I can be of further assistance’ because the door on this issue is NOT open.’”
Olafson lost the election by 38 votes. He said it would be fair to assume those 280 mailers could have been seen by 420 voters and, if only 10 percent of them voted for him, that would have been the difference between winning and losing.
Olafson said he has no recourse, because the election is over now. He also doesn’t expect an apology.
FOIA documents can be viewed below.
FOIA tracking documents 23ALL03328 Clean Pages USPS – final_Redacted (2) (1)
FOIA 2023-FPRO-00582 (3) (1)
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