REGIONAL– Two weeks after Republican Pete Stauber’s campaign made an issue of unpaid parking tickets by his DFL opponent Joe Radinovich, DFLers have turned the tables over an apparent violation of St. Louis County email policy by Stauber. According to the Star Tribune, Stauber improperly used his official county email to communicate with the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Stauber has not denied the allegations but has refused to release the emails as his opponents have requested.

In recent weeks Stauber has criticized Radinovich over past unpaid parking fines, some of which resulted in collection agencies being involved. The Stauber campaign and the Congressional Leadership Fund, a political action committee with the mission to keep a Republican majority in Congress, attacked Radinovich over the issue, suggesting he is unfit to hold office.

Now the DFL is returning fire.

“We can’t trust someone like Pete Stauber who won’t be accountable for their actions in a transparent manner,” said the DFL’s Eighth District Chair Emily Nygren in a statement issued late last week. “The public deserves a representative that is up front about all the business they conduct on the public’s behalf.”

And district residents supporting the DFL candidate have weighed in on the Stauber campaign’s portrayed image of their own candidate.

“Two weeks ago, Pete Stauber claimed through a spokesperson that he had “staked his career on character and integrity’,” Al Netland, a Duluth resident quoted in the DFL’s statement. “Today, it’s clear that Pete Stauber thinks there’s one set of rules for him, and one set of rules for everybody else.”

The DFL has called for Stauber to release the emails to be transparent with taxpayers since the county email servers are paid for through tax money. But St. Louis County has denied a public information request for the emails arguing that they are not subject to public disclosure unless Stauber were to agree because they are considered correspondence between an elected official and an individual, which is considered private under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act.