Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) took aim at the mass fraud revealed under Gov. Tim Walz’s (D-MN) administration in the first video advertisement of her Minnesota gubernatorial campaign.
“My goal as governor is going to be to keep what’s right and fix what’s wrong,” Klobuchar said in the advertisement released Tuesday. “On Day 1, I’ll launch a top-to-bottom audit of state government to root out the waste and the fraud and the abuse.”
Her messaging against “waste, fraud, and abuse,” a tagline often hailed by Republicans, comes in the wake of the Somali fraud scandal that gripped Minnesota over the past year, during which incumbent Walz suspended his Democratic campaign for reelection under pressure amid intensifying fallout. Tackling the fraud scandal has been one of the hottest topics in the Minnesota gubernatorial race as Klobuchar tries to distance herself from the Walz administration’s legacy on the matter.
She also posted on X an endorsement message from former U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Andrew M. Luger, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, who had begun indicting individuals connected to the Minnesota fraud scandal in 2022.
“When U.S. Attorney Andy Luger was prosecuting and exposing fraud cases, I went to the top of the Justice Department to make sure he had the prosecutors he needed to go after these criminals,” Klobuchar wrote. “As a result, the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s office got the biggest increase in prosecutors of any office in the country. While others were just talking about fraud – I took action.”
The stain of Minnesota’s fraud epidemic — in which hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were misused or stolen, stemming from the Feeding Our Future COVID-19 pandemic scheme — has been a prime target of Republicans this election year.
Lisa Demuth, speaker of the state’s House of Representatives and GOP nominee for governor, has made her fraud prevention plan a central part of her campaign, saying she aims to turn Minnesota’s state government “into a fiscal and moral steward of our tax dollars.” She released a plan for her first 90 days if elected Minnesota governor, in which she would “stop fraud, waste, and abuse” of Minnesota tax dollars.
Demuth has slammed Democrats across the board for the Minnesota fraud scandal, saying, “The explosive fraud in Minnesota is a direct result of incompetent Democrat control in this state for more than 16 years,” in an early August primary candidate forum. She directly targeted Klobuchar in an X post on Monday.
“Sadly, Tim Walz and Amy Klobuchar have been more focused on advancing their national political ambitions than fighting Minnesota’s fraud crisis. They took their eyes off Minnesota while the most vulnerable suffer and taxpayers are ripped off,” Demuth wrote.
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Demuth defeated MyPillow founder Mike Lindell in the August GOP primary to advance to the general election against Klobuchar in November.
A June Mason-Dixon poll on the matchup between Demuth and Klobuchar had Klobuchar leading by 8 points in November. Cook Political Report lists the race as solidly Democratic.