Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Michele Tafoya recently announced that her campaign has raised over $2.62 million during the second quarter of 2026, putting her in a likely position to flip a longtime Democratic seat red in the midterm elections in November of this year. Tafoya put out a statement saying, “Minnesotans are showing up in record numbers because they are serious about change and they know we can win this seat and deliver real results.”
“Too many times we’ve been told to accept the status quo and watch failed leadership make mistake after mistake. Well, Minnesotans are done with that,” her statement continued. A report from Alpha News revealed that the news outlet reached out to several other GOP and Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidates running for Senate to inquire about their fundraising numbers for the second quarter.
However, as of this writing, none of those campaigns responded to the request. Tafoya is running for the Senate seat currently occupied by DFL Sen. Tina Smith, who is retiring at the end of her term. The DFL is the name of the Minnesota state affiliate of the Democratic Party. Tafoya is running to be the Republican nominee for the seat and is facing off against former NBA player Royce White and retired Navy SEAL Adam Schwarze in the GOP primary.
According to Alpha News, Schwarze has already been endorsed by the Republican Party during a state convention that was held in Duluth. Congresswoman Angie Craig and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan are both vying for the DFL nomination for the Senate seat. The primary race between the two women has transformed into a bitter feud in recent weeks as both campaigns have ramped up political attacks against each other.
On the flip side, the GOP primary has been a much more calm affair. Tafoya’s $2.62 million fundraising haul in the second quarter is a significant improvement over the numbers she pulled in during the first quarter. At that time, Tafoya raised a little over $2 million, which still outpaced the other candidates, except for Craig who pulled in over $2.5 million.
Tafoya, who is a well-known name in the world of sportscasting, is considered to be the top candidate in the Republican Party primary. In June 2026, a poll from KSTP/SurveyUSA of the primary discovered that Tafoya had 36% support, with White pulling in 15% and Schwarze only having 7% support. And that’s not the only poll in Tafoya’s favor.
An internal poll conducted by Craig’s campaign found that both Tafoya and Flanagan were tied should the two face-off in the general election. However, it’s important to point out that the tie comes only after language connecting Flanagan to the recently uncovered fraud scandals in the state of Minnesota were invoked.
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In December 2025, a video from independent investigative journalist Nick Shirley took the country by storm after he confronted a number of Somali-run daycare centers in the city of Minneapolis, only to discover that while many of them were “operational,” the vast majority of them had no students and were scamming the government out of funds by creating fake centers.
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