Candidate's View: In US Senate race, Minnesota deserves new leadership — not fraud, failure – Duluth News Tribune

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In the U.S. Senate race this fall, Minnesotans have the clearest possible choice.
As lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan has been Tim Walz’s right-hand woman. She has personally presided over historic fraud, higher violent crime rates, lower K-12 test scores, and all the other governing failures that have hurt Minnesotans and forced Gov. Walz out of politics. This is about basic competence.
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Flanagan has spent two decades as a career politician, and her job performance has earned her a pink slip, not a promotion. She is an ultra-partisan career politician from the fringe of her party.
I’m the opposite. While my husband and I raised our family here in Minnesota, I built my own career. For nearly three decades, I worked at the highest levels of sports broadcasting, including more than a decade as a sideline reporter for Sunday Night Football. My career taught me about preparation, discipline, and asking powerful people tough questions.
Minnesotans think for ourselves. Unlike my opponent, I am not an ideologue or a cookie-cutter politician. I will bring an independent mindset to Washington and call out every special interest, every corporation, both party establishments, and any president if they fail to put Minnesotans first.
I never planned on getting into politics. I loved the career and life I had built. But I realized Minnesota has serious problems, and we cannot trust the same career politicians who created the mess to clean it up.
My top priority as our senator will be fighting fraud, protecting taxpayers, and ensuring accountability — both for the criminals who stole billions of our tax dollars from us and for the incompetent politicians who let it happen.
And fraud isn’t our only problem. Five years after reckless, partisan spending sent inflation skyrocketing, families are still struggling with high prices. Our communities are still not as peaceful as Minnesotans remember from before COVID-19 and the 2020 riots. Our public schools should be doing better.
Across all these issues, Flanagan seems to have only one answer: Give more money and power to government bureaucrats and career politicians like her. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ and Peggy Flanagan’s answer on affordability is to raise your taxes even higher. They want to repeal the new funding for rural healthcare that already is sending more than $190 million to Minnesota, and they want to give more control to Washington. They want to disempower families, farmers, parents, patients, small-business owners, and taxpayers — while empowering Minneapolis and D.C.
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I offer a different vision. I am running to restore accountability, cut costs, keep Minnesota safe, and protect women’s sports. I am proud to be endorsed by the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, and the Minnesota Farm Bureau PAC. They support me because I will be an independent voice who listens to every Minnesotan and fights for us all.
The polls are close, and Lt. Gov. Flanagan and her supporters have already started mudslinging. You will hear typical talking points from a typical scripted politician and attack ads from a one-party monopoly that thinks this Senate seat belongs to them.
But higher prices don’t care about party labels. Neither does public safety. Neither does fraud. And this Senate seat does not belong to incompetent politicians or out-of-state extremists who want a rubber stamp. It belongs to you, the men and women of Minnesota.
This election is not about parties or personalities. It is about new leadership versus more of the same. And it’s about whether overseeing the massive theft of your hard-earned tax dollars should earn Peggy Flanagan a promotion or a pink slip. Minnesota, I am humbly asking for your support and vote in November.
Michele Tafoya of Plymouth, Minnesota, is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, to replace the stepping-down Tina Smith. She wrote this exclusively for the News Tribune at the invitation of the News Tribune Opinion page. Election Day is Nov. 3.

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