WASHINGTON – A dream candidate for the national Republican Party, former sportscaster Michele Tafoya is finding support from Washington to be a double-edged sword as she seeks to win retiring Sen. Tina Smith’s seat.
Tafoya, 61, is a skilled and media-savvy communicator whose name recognition and political smarts prompted the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to call her “the only candidate with the common-sense leadership Minnesotans are desperately craving.”
Related: From the NFL sidelines to a US Senate race: Michele Tafoya’s new play
The endorsement by NRSC Chairman Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., made just after Tafoya announced her candidacy in January, has rankled some Minnesota Republicans.
Why? Because there were other Republicans vying for Smith’s seat, including Navy SEAL Adam Schwarze, former NBA player Royce White and Navy veteran Tom Weiler.
Another GOP candidate, former Minnesota Republican Party candidate David Hann, was also in the race at that time but dropped out last month. And Mark York, a seven-generation farmer from Lake Wilson is also running.
Yet the national Republican Party, which is battling to prevent a Democratic takeover of the U.S. Senate in November’s midterm election, placed its bet on Tafoya.
That has disgruntled some of the 2,500 Republican delegates who will vote to endorse the GOP Senate candidates in Duluth at the end of the month.
“You have people who would see (support from the national party) as a plus, and there also are people who would see it as meddling from Washington,” said Frank Long, a delegate and longtime party activist from Watertown Township who supports Schwarze.
Long said the state’s Republicans “are not a monolithic organization.” He said some delegates are concerned about Tafoya’s support for abortion – which she says now is limited to procedures in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Tafoya has also expressed support for “red flag” laws — which allow law enforcement to temporarily remove weapons to individuals a court has assessed might be a danger to themselves or others — that are opposed by many gun-rights delegates.
Remarks Tafoya made about President Donald Trump in 2022 are another turnoff for some GOP delegates. She wrote an open letter to Trump in a now deleted post on Substack that said she hoped he would not run again, and even as she praised his accomplishments called his politics “messy.”
While Tafoya may not be the first choice of some delegates, “she has the right to run,” Long said.
Tafoya has since aligned herself closely with Trump’s platform and embroiled herself in the culture wars with her fierce opposition to transgender women in female sports.
But if she makes it to the general election, running against either Rep. Angie Craig, D-2nd District, or Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who are locked in battle for the Democratic nomination, Tafoya will likely revert to the more moderate candidate she once considered herself to be.
“I think Minnesota is starving for a moderate Republican who doesn’t tell them that they’re going to ban abortion who is the antithesis of the Tim Walz regime,” Tafoya told WDAY Radio when Smith announced her retirement early last year.
After the February 2022 Super Bowl, Tafoya quit her broadcasting career, launched a political podcast and spent several years weighing whether to run for political office. She met with the NRSC in December and declared her candidacy about a month later.
Weiler, who ran unsuccessfully for the 3rd Congressional District seat in 2022, said he contacted the NRSC last fall seeking support. But he said the people he spoke with seemed uninterested in him because he was “not rich or famous.”
He said he was surprised and disappointed that the NRSC backed Tafoya.
“It was clearly a decision made in Washington, D.C., without any input from Minnesotans,” Weiler said.
Tafoya raised more than $2 million in the two months after she announced her candidacy, with the help of the national GOP. That’s more money than all of her GOP rivals combined.
According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, the NRSC gave Tafoya’s campaign $62,000 and Senate Republican Leader John Thune’s leadership political action committee has held joint fundraisers with Tafoya’s campaign.
The national party’s endorsement also brings help in recruiting campaign staff and campaign consulting, a must-have for a candidate who has never before run for political office.
‘A grass-roots state’
Tim Lindberg, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota-Morris, said the national Republican Party had to step into the race for Smith’s seat “to some extent because the state party has been in disarray.”
Shut out of holding a statewide seat for 20 years, the state party is low on cash and divided between the establishment Republicans, like Tafoya, and more conservative MAGA activists.
So, while Tafoya’s campaign has had a boost from the NRSC and other GOP national organizations it is not guaranteed that she will win the votes of 60% of the GOP delegates needed to win an endorsement.
Tafoya’s campaign did not respond to requests for an interview and information. But the former sportscaster has said she will continue to run for the U.S. Senate and participate in the Aug. 11 primary even without an endorsement.
Historically, not all of Minnesota’s GOP candidates have abided by the endorsement. But the state’s political history also shows that Republican voters don’t reward non-endorsed candidates very often, especially in statewide elections, when the primary comes around.
Schwarze, another rival for the GOP endorsement, said Republicans “don’t reward people who take shortcuts.”
He called Tafoya a “D.C. out-of -the -box candidate” and is confident he will earn the endorsement, even if it takes several rounds of balloting.
“Minnesotans are not for sale,” Schwarze said. “This is a grass-roots state.”
The former Navy SEAL speaks in military terms about the U.S. Senate race.
“I’ve been preparing for this campaign run as if it were a ‘no-fail’ mission,” he said. After Tafoya, Schwarze, who reported raising more than $1 million as of March 31, has amassed the largest campaign chest among the GOP Senate candidates. Yet Democrats Craig and Flanagan have much larger war chests than Tafoya and Schwarze.
Both Schwarze and White — who won the GOP endorsement to run against Sen. Amy Klobuchar in 2024 — have vowed to abide by the endorsement and support the delegates’ candidate of choice.
“The mission is going to get a Republican U.S. Senator,” Schwarze said.
But Weiler has a different attitude. He said he would continue his campaign unless he’s convinced the delegates have chosen a candidate “who can win and be an effective senator for Minnesota.”
Lindberg said Tafoya is well liked for her high profile in the world of sports.
Related: Eric Pratt shakes off GOP rivals but faces tough Democratic challengers in race for Angie Craig’s seat
She spent three decades covering the NBA, NFL, Olympics and college football. A Californian by birth, many Minnesotans got to know Tafoya when she worked as a sportscaster and reporter for sports radio KFAN in Minneapolis — covering the Vikings — the Midwest Sports Channel and WCCO-TV.
Lindberg said the NRSC is “banking” on her popularity and name recognition. But he said that strategy could “backfire” in an endorsement process that is dominated by party activists in both the Democratic and Republican state conventions.
“It’s not clear that the people at these conventions really care about electability,” he said.
Related
