Imported VPN profiles cannot be enabled and instantly fail

[warpz0ne]

Background: I often use openvpn profiles when on-the-go for extra security, and am no stranger to the basic concept. Initially I would run openvpn in terminal and manually edit the resolv.conf file for DNS resolution; it wasn't convenient but it worked. A few versions of Mint later and the Network Manager had a decent VPN implementation that worked most of the time. It was definitely working in 18.x for me with imported .ovpn profiles.

Recently I performed a clean EFI install of Mint 19 on a Lenovo T580. (Before anyone asks, yes it has the linux CPU throttling bug ) I am able to import the .ovpn files into Network Manager as before, but they all instantly fail to connect. I double checked user/pw, and "Password with Certificates (TLS)" sounds like the correct setting. All the certs are populated in the connection edit window, and Network Manager put the .pem files in "~/.cert/nm-openvpn/"

"/var/log/syslog" shows the following:

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Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER NetworkManager[870]: <info>  [1541652702.5596] audit: op="connection-activate" uuid="05105dff-8978-4147-8786-bdb273971595" name="United States - California" pid=2133 uid=1000 result="success"
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER NetworkManager[870]: <info>  [1541652702.5630] vpn-connection[0x556ba1952460,05105dff-8978-4147-8786-bdb273971595,"United States - California",0]: Started the VPN service, PID 4407
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER NetworkManager[870]: <info>  [1541652702.5691] vpn-connection[0x556ba1952460,05105dff-8978-4147-8786-bdb273971595,"United States - California",0]: Saw the service appear; activating connection
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER NetworkManager[870]: <info>  [1541652702.6492] vpn-connection[0x556ba1952460,05105dff-8978-4147-8786-bdb273971595,"United States - California",0]: VPN plugin: state changed: starting (3)
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER NetworkManager[870]: <info>  [1541652702.6492] vpn-connection[0x556ba1952460,05105dff-8978-4147-8786-bdb273971595,"United States - California",0]: VPN connection: (ConnectInteractive) reply received
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER nm-openvpn[4413]: Options error: --ca fails with '/home/user/.cert/nm-openvpn/United%20States%20-%20California-ca.pem': No such file or directory (errno=2)
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER nm-openvpn[4413]: Options error: --cert fails with '/home/user/.cert/nm-openvpn/United%20States%20-%20California-cert.pem': No such file or directory (errno=2)
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER nm-openvpn[4413]: WARNING: cannot stat file '/home/user/.cert/nm-openvpn/United%20States%20-%20California-key.pem': No such file or directory (errno=2)
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER nm-openvpn[4413]: Options error: --key fails with '/home/user/.cert/nm-openvpn/United%20States%20-%20California-key.pem': No such file or directory (errno=2)
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER nm-openvpn[4413]: Options error: Please correct these errors.
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER nm-openvpn[4413]: Use --help for more information.
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER NetworkManager[870]: <warn>  [1541652702.6524] vpn-connection[0x556ba1952460,05105dff-8978-4147-8786-bdb273971595,"United States - California",0]: VPN plugin: failed: connect-failed (1)
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER NetworkManager[870]: <warn>  [1541652702.6526] vpn-connection[0x556ba1952460,05105dff-8978-4147-8786-bdb273971595,"United States - California",0]: VPN plugin: failed: connect-failed (1)
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER NetworkManager[870]: <info>  [1541652702.6526] vpn-connection[0x556ba1952460,05105dff-8978-4147-8786-bdb273971595,"United States - California",0]: VPN plugin: state changed: stopping (5)
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER NetworkManager[870]: <info>  [1541652702.6527] vpn-connection[0x556ba1952460,05105dff-8978-4147-8786-bdb273971595,"United States - California",0]: VPN plugin: state changed: stopped (6)
Nov  7 21:51:42 COMPUTER NetworkManager[870]: <info>  [1541652702.6549] vpn-connection[0x556ba1952460,05105dff-8978-4147-8786-bdb273971595,"United States - California",0]: VPN service disappeared

It seems to be unable to find the .pem files, but they are all present where it is trying to look:

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user@COMPUTER:~/.cert/nm-openvpn$ ls -a United\ States\ -\ California-*
'United States - California-ca.pem'    'United States - California-key.pem'
'United States - California-cert.pem'

Everything worked fine in 18.x, albeit on a different computer (T410). I'm actually connected via terminal openvpn right now to this exact same server, so that much is working.

Anyone else have this problem? Am I doing something wrong? What am I missing? Maybe it doesn't like the "%20" for spaces, instead of escape characters "\ ", but that is not something I did.