Klobuchar pitches moderation and fraud cleanup in Minnesota governor bid

Pandemic fraud losses estimated between $300 million and billions

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the Senate’s third-highest-ranking Democrat, is running to succeed Gov. Tim Walz after Walz abandoned his bid for a third term in the wake of the pandemic-era fraud scandal. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal and a new television ad that began airing late last week, Klobuchar, 66, pointed to her prosecutorial experience and cast herself as the candidate to clean up the mess.

Minnesota has emerged as a national political flashpoint in this year’s midterm elections. The Journal described the state as “a political Rorschach test” once known mostly for cold winters and Bob Dylan. In its reporting, the Journal noted two competing narratives: Republicans see Minnesota as a state where liberal naiveté delivered welfare fraud and general decline, while Democrats view it as a blue bastion where a grassroots resistance rose up and turned the tide in a battle against President Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement.

Even as some Democrats try to move their party in a more progressive — even socialist — direction, Klobuchar has called for no new taxes, expressed a willingness to work with Republicans and businesses, and pointed to her differences with Walz, whose approval rating has fallen in the wake of the fraud. “Major things went wrong,” Klobuchar said of the state’s current leadership, in an interview. “That pissed me off, and everyone else off.” She cited her more than a decade of private legal practice in Minneapolis, where her work concentrated in telecommunications law, and her prior role as the top prosecutor of the state’s most populated county as qualifications for tackling the fraud. In her television ad, she vows to “clean up this mess.”

The fraud, which the Journal reported “perpetuated mostly by Somali immigrants,” has drawn national attention as Trump and Republicans have used it as a potent example of Democratic mismanagement. Republicans now lump Minnesota in with traditional GOP punching bags such as New York, California and Illinois. Total losses remain unknown, with estimates ranging from $300 million to billions of dollars. Klobuchar said warning signs were missed. “They were just signing off on these grants,” she said. “Walz himself said he should have caught it earlier. Well, yeah. When the line item is skyrocketing up for one program that should be an immediate red alert.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are questioning whether her moderate rhetoric would become liberal governance, as was the case with Walz. “She has a more moderate temperament, but it remains to be seen if she governs in a more moderate way,” said Jim Schultz, a Republican and leader of the Minnesota Private Business Council. “She has been a reliable liberal vote in the U.S. Senate.” Klobuchar pushed back by noting that she raised her hand on a 2020 Democratic presidential primary debate stage when candidates were asked if they worried about a “Democratic socialist” at the top of the ticket — businessman Tom Steyer was the only other candidate to do so. While the 2028 Democratic presidential field is expected to be large, Klobuchar has said she will not be a candidate then or in 2032.

A “river of sadness” has flowed through Minnesota this decade, the Journal reported, from the 2020 killing of George Floyd by police and the riots that followed, to political assassinations and a mass shooting of schoolchildren inside a church. The fatal shootings of two Minneapolis residents in January by federal immigration officers amid a Trump administration enforcement surge were among the latest calamities. Klobuchar said Minnesota’s run of bad news has been amplified on the national stage, in part, because Minnesotans have protested in large numbers when people have been killed. “We stand up, and so that is not an excuse for any of this,” she said. “It just is a partial answer to why I think it’s been in the public’s eye.”

The state’s tarnished reputation stands in contrast to its mid-century image, when TIME magazine in 1973 put Minnesota’s governor on its cover, wearing a plaid shirt and holding freshly caught northern pike, in an article showcasing a robust economy and a Norman Rockwell-like quality of life. The state was also the inspiration for Minnesota native Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, a fictional and idyllic small town featured in his radio monologues where nothing of national importance ever happened. The signature tagline for those monologues was that it was “a place where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

A half-century later, the Journal reported, state economic growth has trailed the nation’s since the early 2000s, population gains rank in the bottom half of states, and personal and corporate taxes are among the nation’s highest, as are binge drinking rates. In 2022, Minnesota’s fourth-graders for the first time tested below the national average in reading proficiency, and overall student achievement has been lagging for much of the past decade. The Annie E. Casey Foundation ranks Minnesota fifth in the nation for overall child well-being but 21st for education. Young adults are leaving the state for college and employment elsewhere at higher rates than those moving in. Klobuchar, the daughter of a newspaper columnist and teacher, said the state’s declining test scores were “completely unacceptable” and called for greater emphasis on phonics, additional tutoring and summer reading programs.

If elected, Klobuchar would face a narrowly divided state legislature, with Democrats holding a one-seat majority in the Senate and tied with Republicans in the House. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, as Minnesota Democrats are known, has moved left in recent years, and the state has passed paid family and medical leave and expanded transgender-rights protections. Her Republican opponent, state House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who beat a Trump-endorsed candidate in the GOP primary, said the legislature’s progressive tilt would push Klobuchar leftward. “No Democrat can possibly think that they are going to make the depth of changes that are needed in every single agency,” Demuth said. “The only way to make those changes is someone of a different party.”

Klobuchar, for her part, has said she has already had extensive conversations with progressive legislators and has stressed to them that economic growth would be the ultimate revenge against Republicans who have mocked the state.

While Minnesota faces plenty of problems, it still scores high on many quality-of-life rankings, has a robust cultural scene and a AAA bond rating, The Wall Street Journal reported. Eighteen Fortune 500 companies are based in Minnesota, although many are long-lived ones, such as 3M and General Mills, and the state isn’t attracting many startups.

Republicans have not won a statewide office in Minnesota since 2006, and Klobuchar won 56% of the vote in her 2024 Senate reelection — more than five points higher than the share won by the Democratic presidential ticket that included Walz. If elected, Klobuchar said she planned to look to red- and blue-state governors for ideas and would cut “red tape” and streamline state government. “If you want to have more housing or child care, you cannot stop people all the time and make it hard for them to start a business,” she said. She added: “We brought the world everything from the pacemaker to the Post-it Note. We have the Mayo Clinic that’s currently investing $5 billion. But we cannot rest on our laurels.”