Walz's Wingwoman Peggy Flanagan Prevails in Minnesota Senate Race

Minnesota Democrat Peggy Flanagan held off former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya in a closely watched Senate race Tuesday, overcoming questions about her handling of multiple fraud scandals while serving as lieutenant governor in the administration of Governor Tim Walz.

Flanagan led Tafoya by a 10-point margin when the race was called at at 12:20 a.m.

She will become the first Native American woman to be elected to the Senate. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), who campaigned with Flanagan, claimed during her senatorial campaigns a decade ago to be of Cherokee heritage, but DNA tests showed she was at most 1/1,056th Cherokee ancestry.

The race proved uncomfortably close for Democrats, thanks largely to scrutiny of the Walz-Flanagan administration's handling of the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, in which state agencies doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to a network of Somali-American nonprofit groups as part of a federally funded food program for schoolchildren.

The groups stole at least $250 million by submitting falsified invoices for tens of thousands of meals that were never served. The scandal stoked scrutiny of Minnesota's large Somali population, and sparked a Trump administration crackdown on potential visa and immigration fraud by sending thousands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the state.

That proved a rallying cry for Democrats, especially in the wake of the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were shot during physical altercations with ICE agents conducting enforcement raids. Flanagan said after the shootings that ICE should be "ripped apart."

Flanagan, whose administration has given $7.9 million in state funds to a group that provides "booty bumping" kits to allow addicts to take drugs through the rectum, has also gone to bat on the transgender rights issue, especially regarding so-called gender affirming care for children.

In 2023, she sported a controversial T-shirt adorned with a large hunting knife with "Protect Trans Kids" scrawled across the chest. The attire drew scrutiny after Robin Westman, a 23-year-old biological male, shot up the Church of the Annunciation in Minneapolis in August 2025.