Republican Minnesota State Senator Sean Nienow is getting some attention and some heat for defaulting on a small business administration loan and for being sued by the federal government (Complaint here, Complaint’s Exhibits, here). (Nienow gave an unconditional personal guaranty in connection with a small business.) Local press is cattily critiquing him for being a fiscal conservative who, it is implied, may have been fiscally reckless in his own business.
Hold on there. Businesses fail all the time. Nienow’s business hoped to provide parents with help in the decision-making involved in sending kids to summer activities. If ever there were a business that was vulnerable to a sharp economic downturn, this would seem to be it. And maybe some need a reminder that we have endured the sharpest economic downturn since the Great Depression in recent years .
There is nothing in the complaint or publicly available elsewhere to support any suggestion of wrong-doing or of fiscal recklessness by Nienow. If anything surfaces, then that’s fair game, of course. But, in the mean time, how about we put aside partisan snipes and snarks and feel some sympathy for what appears to be just another of far too many small business failures?