Minnesota’s open Senate race has tightened into a real fight as a sprawling state fraud scandal shadows Democrats, handing Republicans a rare opening in a blue-leaning state.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan still holds a slim edge over Republican Michele Tafoya for the seat of retiring Sen. Tina Smith. But that lead has only narrowed in limited public polls ahead of Election Day, and nonpartisan handicappers have stopped treating the contest like a Democratic lock.
The Hill reported that the Cook Political Report moved the race from “likely” Democrat to “lean” Democrat, citing Flanagan’s underperformance next to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a statewide fraud scandal, and Tafoya as a strong GOP recruit. Republicans have not won a Minnesota Senate race in roughly a generation. This cycle, they finally have a live lane.
Longtime Minnesota analyst Blois Olson put the stakes plainly.
“This is one of the races that could be so close we might have a recount,”
Olson also described Flanagan’s proximity to the fraud mess as “a little bit like ankle weights around her campaign.” That is the core of the race: an open seat, a Democrat tied to the current administration, and a Republican forcing the scandal onto every ballot.
Gov. Tim Walz abandoned his bid for a third term in January as fraud allegations drew heavy criticism. Flanagan served as his running mate in 2018 and 2022 and has spent nearly eight years under him. Tafoya has made that record the center of her campaign.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Tafoya asked the question Democrats would rather skip.
“Why has no one been fired?”
She pressed the contrast further: Walz got pushed out of the governor’s race, yet Flanagan is seeking a step up. “The only real consequence we’ve seen is that Tim Walz was convinced to step out of his third term gubernatorial race because there was no way he was going to survive this. But Peggy Flanagan’s asking for a promotion.”
Fox News reported a Minnesota Star Tribune/KARE 11 poll showing Tafoya down by only four points and noted its own Power Rankings also shifted the race to Lean Democrat. Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter heavily recruited by national Republicans, is selling change and accountability after eight years of the Walz-Flanagan ticket.
She told Fox voters are catching on.
“The more that Minnesotans learn about me and my opponent and see what my opponent has failed to do over the last eight years alongside Tim Walz, they're understanding Minnesota needs change.”
On the same theme, she argued Walz grasped he could not win again under these conditions, while Flanagan still wants elevation. “I think people are starting to realize she deserves a pink slip.” That message is landing in a state long written off as safe blue territory for Senate Democrats.
Senate control fights elsewhere already feature a record number of toss-up races, and Minnesota’s sudden competitiveness fits that wider map.
Allegations of up to billions of dollars in fraud inside Minnesota social service programs hang over the race. Senate Republicans’ campaign arm has hammered Flanagan directly on that record and on questions about her academic credentials.
Spokeswoman Bernadette Breslin did not soft-pedal the charge.
“Peggy Flanagan allowed fraudsters to plunder billions in taxpayer dollars on her watch, and now she’s facing questions about her own inflated academic record,”
Breslin added that Minnesotans “aren’t buying the excuses Flanagan is selling” and are counting on Tafoya “to protect their hard-earned tax dollars.” The Phi Beta Kappa dust-up flared after the Wall Street Journal initially reported Flanagan had not been a member. Her campaign said she had been nominated but could not afford the fee at the time; the honor society later confirmed to The Hill and other outlets that she had been a member.
The New York Post reported on a debate exchange in which Tafoya went straight at the dollar figure and Flanagan’s role as second-in-command. Tafoya charged that only one candidate “let $9 billion walk out the door to fraud.” Flanagan answered that “the governor’s been very clear that the buck stops with him” and that Walz “was the one who had oversight here.”
Flanagan’s campaign has drawn the same line in public: Walz oversees state agencies and programs, while the lieutenant governor’s statutory duties are more limited. A campaign official also said more should have been done sooner on fraud and called the issue personal for Flanagan, who at one point relied on Medicaid and Section 8 housing. Voters hearing “the buck stops with him” while the No. 2 asks for a Senate promotion may not find that split as neat as the campaign does.
Former GOP Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Amy Frederiksen, who is not working the race, said large blocs of undecided voters are still swinging day to day. One day they fill the tank and get angry about Iran and tariffs. The next news cycle, she said, brings “another 10 million or another 15 million stolen, and nobody did anything about it.” Those twin pressures, prices and unpunished fraud, keep the race unstable.
Just the News reported an InsiderAdvantage survey of 1,200 likely voters, taken Sept. 28, 29, with Flanagan at 46% and Tafoya at 45%. Six percent were undecided. The 2.95-point margin of error made it a statistical tie. Pollster Matt Towery called the result unusual against other Senate trends and tied it to Walz’s falling popularity and “growing evidence of fraud in the state” weighing on the DFL nominee.
National Review noted recent polls showing Flanagan up by one, a tie, and up by one again, not a done deal, but proof Democrats are defending a seat they did not expect to fight for. The piece argued the NRSC could justify extra resources if the race stays this tight. National Democratic spokespeople have claimed national Republican groups have spent little on the contest so far. A late flood of money would test that talking point.
Party leaders already talk about beating the polls and holding the Senate as outside groups move cash. A Minnesota pickup would be the kind of out-of-nowhere seat that makes those forecasts real.
Senate Democrats’ campaign arm still projects confidence. Spokeswoman Maddy McDaniel said Republicans “haven’t won a Minnesota Senate race in more than 20 years and that losing streak will continue in 2026 when Minnesotans elect Democrat Peggy Flanagan.” She labeled Tafoya “a Trump loyalist and a wealthy Republican activist.” That is the Democratic theory of the race: nationalize Tafoya, minimize the fraud hangover, and ride old habits.
Former Minnesota DFL Party chair Mike Erlandson offered a blunter internal read. He said the fraud “hangs over the state of Minnesota” and is “a bit of a drag for Democrats,” while still arguing the Trump administration is a bigger drag on Republicans. Flanagan’s side wants that second half of the sentence to decide the election. Tafoya’s side is betting the first half finally matters more.
Democrats are working overtime to make the race a referendum on President Trump. Tafoya has taken steps in recent weeks to keep the focus on Minnesota’s failures. In a Monday night debate, asked about the president’s endorsement, she answered: “There is one endorsement that I care about and that is the one that happens on Nov. 3.”
In a CBS News interview she also voiced frustration over the length of the war in Iran and high gas prices, saying the conflict “has gone on longer than I think people were ready for and we’re suffering at the gas pump.” Her campaign did not respond to a Hill request for comment on the broader positioning. Flanagan’s campaign accused Tafoya of trying, in the last month before the election, “to try and walk away from all the positions that she’s been holding for years.”
Price spikes on gas and fertilizer, a tariff fight with Canada, and earlier federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota, including two ICE-involved shootings, all sit in the background noise. None of that erases the simpler accountability problem Tafoya keeps raising: major fraud on the Walz-Flanagan watch, a governor who quit the field, and a lieutenant governor asking voters for a promotion anyway.
Narrow majorities already shape near-party-line Senate confirmation fights. One unexpected Minnesota win would echo through every close floor vote next Congress.
For now the structure is clear. An open seat. A Democrat tied to an administration stained by massive alleged fraud. A Republican outsider who will not drop the subject. Cook’s downgrade, single-digit and one-point polls, and a deep pool of undecideds all say the same thing: this is no longer a courtesy race on the Democratic ledger.
Taxpayers who watched billions slip through social programs while almost nobody got fired do not owe anyone a blue wave. They owe themselves a senator who treats their money as if it mattered.