Ahead of debate, Minnesota Senate campaign is still just simmering
The race between Flanagan and Tafoya is drawing little outside interest
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In a year when Senate campaigns in states including Texas, Michigan and even Kansas are drawing national attention and campaign money, the race in Minnesota has been seen just a trickle of outside attention.
Yes, there are candidate ads clogging the TV airwaves, but Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and former sports broadcaster Michele Tafoya have not held many news conferences or big rallies. They will meet for their only scheduled debate on Friday at MPR News.
Tafoya, the Republican, and Flanagan, a Democrat, slogged through a primary race in which more than $20 million dollars was spent by outside groups. That was mostly on the DFL side.
But in the general election campaign, the race has fallen off a cliff financially. As of Friday, post-primary outside spending was in the ballpark of $2 million, according to public records.
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Much of that — about $1.3 million — is on pro-Flanagan billboards appearing alongside freeways.
That may be because Republicans have been forced to spend big on many contests in reliably red states.
Some recent polling has shown Tafoya and Flanagan running neck and neck. But parties and groups also rely on internal polls to decide where to deploy money.
National Democrats and Republicans would likely be pouring more money into this race if they thought the Minnesota seat was in play.
Even when Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune was on a farm near Le Sueur last week stumping for Tafoya, he wasn't exactly enthusiastic when asked if the Senate Leadership Fund would be spending money on the race.
“As we think about the map and races, yes, there's more interest, and every day when she's out there and has an opportunity to make her case, and there's a lot of really positive buzz around the country, and obviously translating that into into financial resources and support coming here is something we hope to see happen,” Thune said.
Tafoya was asked how much money she’d need from the fund for her campaign.
“I'm not going to put a dollar number on it. I think they all know what we need and what we’d like,” she said. “I’ll leave it to them to put a dollar number on it. We're going to talk. We haven't had that conversation. We haven’t had that conversation yet, but it's a beautiful day. We still have a few hours. We'll be talking about it.”
Flanagan said last week that polling numbers can be misleading. “Polls didn’t necessarily tell the story in the primary election,” she said about a race she won by double digits.
“I have always run for office like I’m 10 points behind, even when I was unopposed running for the Minnesota state Legislature,” she said. “I simply need people to know the choice in this race.”
She said even if people don’t agree with her on everything, “people just need to know that Michele Tafoya will be another vote for Donald Trump, and I will be a vote for Minnesotans.”
Tafoya has begun airing ads proclaiming herself an independent voice.
“I’m a pro-choice Republican. I’m not afraid to stand up to my party. When Trump is right, I’ll work with him,” she says in ad that shows her speaking direct-into-the-camera. “When he’s wrong I’ll stand up for Minnesota.”
During her event in Le Sueur, she said this is a race where national Republicans should spend.
“This is one worth investing in. We are right there, and we have a message of fresh leadership,” she said. “We have a message of getting rid of the fraud, waste, and abuse that the Walz-Flanagan administration oversaw, and there's no getting around that.”
The runway for national funding is getting shorter as the race barrels toward Election Day on Nov. 3.
In the meantime, both candidates are working to get their messages out.
Flanagan is in on a closing statewide tour, in which she’s doing 30 events across 30 days.
The challenges for her will be having enough cash on hand to be able to keep pace with any big influxes of money Tafoya might get in these last few weeks. She’ll have to be on the defense over the biggest issue Tafoya has used against her — the social services fraud cases that occurred during the Walz administration.
Flanagan has had to confront the fraud question all campaign long. She has said while she’s been a governing partner with Gov. Tim Walz for two terms, she was tasked with other assignments. Flanagan said more should have been done to stop it sooner and protect legitimate programs from being bilked.
Finally, she has to hope for no big surprises in the last three weeks.
For Tafoya, it's about energizing a base that hasn't always been excited about her. Tafoya is popular nationally among many Republicans, but she had a hard time winning over Minnesota Republicans at the party convention in May, losing the endorsement to another candidate.
Tafoya was seen as not in line with some in the party on core GOP issues. On abortion for example, she has said supports "reasonable access" in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Another of those issues is gun laws; she has supported red flag laws in the past.
But she's caught in a tough triangle. She is working to win over the MAGA base, pressing to get national dollars flowing into her campaign and trying to distance herself from an unpopular president.
The MPR News U.S. Senate debate can be heard live at noon Friday on the radio and viewed online.
