Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan has spent nearly eight years serving alongside Gov. Tim Walz. But when the state’s massive fraud scandals came up during Friday’s U.S. Senate debate, she was remarkably quick to explain which half of the administration was responsible.
Not hers, apparently.
Republican Michele Tafoya pressed Flanagan on the missing taxpayer money during their only scheduled debate before November’s election. Flanagan acknowledged the problem. Taking any personal responsibility for it proved considerably more difficult.
“The governor’s been very clear that the buck stops with him. He was the one who had oversight here,” Flanagan said. She added that her own portfolio included areas such as school meals.
School meals were perhaps not the best subject to bring up.
Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit at the center of Minnesota’s notorious child-nutrition fraud case, was accused of siphoning off approximately $250 million in federal funds. Prosecutors said the operation involved claims for enormous numbers of meals that never reached children.
And that was hardly the full extent of Minnesota’s troubles. Former U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson warned in December 2025 that suspected fraud across state programs could total as much as $9 billion (an estimate, not an established total of stolen money) going back to 2018.
Tafoya reminded her opponent that the governor’s office has had two names attached to it for years.
“My goodness, she was second in charge in this state, and she’s just going to point her finger at Gov. Tim Walz when she demanded it be the Walz-Flanagan administration, when she demanded to be in the room where everything happened, but suddenly she has nothing to do with this,” Tafoya said.
Flanagan insisted she was angry about the fraud herself. She backed the creation of an independent inspector general’s office and supported increasing penalties, she said. The lieutenant governor also agreed with Walz’s admission that Minnesota should have acted sooner.
Those positions are easier to adopt now, with an election approaching, than they might have been when the money was disappearing.
Tafoya brought the discussion back to the ballot. Voters, she argued, were being asked to trust a member of the same administration that had overseen the scandals. Flanagan’s promises of tougher oversight did little to impress her.
“This historic fraud happened under her watch, and suddenly she’s looking out for Medicaid and SNAP? Sell it to someone else, Peggy,” Tafoya said.
Later, Tafoya offered a fairly concise description of what she plans to do in Washington.
“Listen, I am going to Washington to be an equal opportunity pain in the ass to any corrupt, career politician,” she said. “I don’t care which side of the aisle they’re on or which office they hold.”
The hour-long debate also covered taxes, immigration, tariffs, abortion, Social Security and foreign policy. Flanagan repeatedly tried to tie Tafoya to President Donald Trump, who endorsed the Republican days before the debate. Tafoya, meanwhile, portrayed herself as an “independent thinker” willing to break with her party.
Immigration produced another sharp disagreement. Flanagan wants ICE dismantled and replaced with a different enforcement system. Tafoya criticized how the federal operation in Minnesota was carried out, but also accused Walz and Flanagan of failing to control the violence surrounding the protests.
Still, fraud was the subject Flanagan couldn’t escape simply by invoking Trump. She has been lieutenant governor since January 2019, including during the years when state officials were supposed to be watching where the money went.
Walz may have agreed to take the blame. Whether Minnesota voters are willing to let his lieutenant governor hand it all to him is another question.
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