By admin 
In a local radio interview earlier this month, Michele Tafoya, the Republican Senate nominee in Minnesota and former sports broadcaster, was asked about her past criticism of the state and whether she was embarrassed by Minnesota.
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“If I were embarrassed to be from Minnesota, would I be running for the United States Senate to represent Minnesota?” Tafoya asked, before adding, “I have never said that.”
But three years ago, in a since-deleted tweet uncovered by CNN’s KFile, Tafoya said exactly that.
“I’m embarrassed to say I live in Minnesota. This state has gone so far left it’s amazing any of the snow still sticks,” Tafoya posted in March 2023.
When another user told her she could leave, Tafoya replied, “That’s the plan! Have a great day!” She added that she was considering moving to Tennessee. A day after that, asked by another user “promise?” she wrote, “Yes. I want to make you and your 35 followers happy.”
The deleted exchange was part of a broader pattern of Tafoya criticizing the state she is now running to represent.
A CNN KFile review found that, in the years before launching her Senate campaign, in tweets and on her podcast, Tafoya repeatedly said she planned to leave Minnesota. At times she described Minnesota in sharply negative terms because of its politics, while often identifying herself as a part-time Floridian and praising that state as a model of conservative governance.
In just the past three years, Tafoya told followers at least four separate times that she planned to leave the state.
Tafoya is facing Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in November for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Tina Smith. Republicans are hoping to flip the open seat as they seek their first Minnesota Senate victory since 2002.
Tafoya’s campaign is built around criticism of Minnesota’s political leadership. Her platform describes schools that “used to be a crown jewel,” a state that “was ground zero” for the Defund the Police movement and a “crisis of leadership” caused by politicians she calls “crazy” and “cowards.” Her campaign promises a Minnesota “comeback.”
But her other posts went further, expressing embarrassment not merely with the state’s leaders but with living in Minnesota itself because of its politics, and repeatedly discussed plans to leave.
Democrats have seized on some of those comments. A week after Tafoya won the Republican nomination, Minnesota Democrats sought to capitalize on some of them with a page calling her “Minnesota’s Biggest Hater.”
Among the highlighted comments by Minnesota Democrats: an August interview on Fox News in which Tafoya said she had spoken with Minnesota voters who told her they were embarrassed to say where they were from. The interview later prompted the local-radio question where Tafoya falsely denied she had ever said she was embarrassed to be from Minnesota.
In the radio interview earlier this month, Tafoya did acknowledge that she had wanted to leave Minnesota at the time of the 2024 post. “Well two years ago I was in that place.”
Asked what changed, she pointed to her family’s ties to the state.
“I think just over time watching my kids go through school. Watching them want to stay here. My son’s in college here. My daughter’s a senior in high school here. They love it here. And that matters to me,” she said. “This state means a lot to us.”
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In a statement provided by her campaign to CNN, Tafoya criticized the state’s Democratic leaders, saying, “I hear from Minnesotans every day that they are fed up and won’t be staying forever if we can’t turn this state around. I love Minnesota and I got into this race to fight for it.”
‘Minnesota is my home’
A veteran sports broadcaster, Tafoya spent nearly three decades covering the NFL, NBA and Olympics for CBS, ABC, ESPN and NBC, most prominently as the sideline reporter for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” from 2011 until she left the network in 2022.
She moved to Minnesota in 1993 to work for Minneapolis local sports station KFAN, where she covered the Minnesota Vikings.
In January 2022, she said she was leaving sports broadcasting, but not the state. “Minnesota is my home,” Tafoya told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “My kids love it here.”
By November 2022 she seemed less certain about Minnesota on her new podcast “Sideline Sanity,” on conservative radio.
“You were smart enough to move south,” Tafoya told a guest on her podcast in 2022, adding, “I’m sitting here in snow and cold today, but eventually I’m gonna be a Florida resident.”
A few months later, Tafoya described herself on her podcast as “sort of a Florida woman,” because she lived part time and owned a house there.
References to Florida were not isolated to her podcast. In tweets, Tafoya repeatedly praised Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis while highlighting the state’s policies as a model for other states.
In a tweet in September 2023, Tafoya, referring to herself as a Florida resident, shared a Wall Street Journal opinion article praising DeSantis’ response to Hurricane Idalia that argued it would be an asset to any forthcoming president campaign.
“What Florida residents (including me) understand about @GovRonDeSantis,” she wrote.
In August 2024, Tafoya quote-tweeted a post arguing Minnesota had become “California Midwest,” and was ruined by “half a century of kooks and communists.” She responded, “as a native Californian who moved to Minnesota in 1994, I know. Fleeing soon.”
A year later, after a shooting at a Catholic school in Minnesota, she invoked the same idea again while attacking Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom for commenting on the tragedy. “I was born in CA and left… I moved to Minnesota and will be leaving. The GOP is in charge of neither state,” she said.
In July 2025, Tafoya said on a podcast, “There are a lot of people leaving, and I think I’ll be one of them in the near future.”
Later, in September she added, “When I first moved to Minnesota, I really liked it here. It was safe and clean and beautiful and culturally diverse. And now it is not as safe, it is not as clean, it is not as beautiful, and we have Ilhan Omar and Tim Walz. So, suffice to say, I won’t be here for the long haul.”
Four months later, she announced her candidacy to be Minnesota’s next senator.