MINNEAPOLIS — Just a few months ago, Larissa Laramee would have encouraged Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to run for president. She admired the man who helped lead the Democratic presidential ticket in 2024 — and who once taught her social studies.
But Laramee’s feelings have changed as a yearslong welfare fraud probe in Minnesota becomes a national maelstrom. Prosecutors say scammers stole brazenly from safety net programs, taking hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding — potentially billions — for services they never provided while Walz led the state.
“I like him as a person. He’s fantastic,” said Laramee, 40, who works at a Minnesota nonprofit for people with disabilities. Walz, as her high school teacher, helped inspire her career, she said. “But with all of this that’s happened, I’m struggling with seeing a path forward for him.”
Laramee’s doubts show how the sprawling fraud cases in Minnesota now hang over Walz — even as it’s too soon to tell how they will ultimately affect his political future. A year and a half after he vaulted onto the national stage as Kamala Harris’ running mate, Walz is back in the spotlight, this time for a controversy that Republicans around the country view as political gold.
Republicans are betting the fraud saga will hurt Walz, a staunch liberal and potential 2028 presidential candidate who is seeking a third term as governor this year. GOP officials say it will be one of their top campaign issues in Minnesota as they try to reverse many years of statewide losses and navigate through tough national headwinds in the midterms.
But many of the attacks on Walz are geared just as much toward riling the GOP’s national base, using the issue and Walz’s prominence to validate broader anger within the party over immigration and a social welfare system that President Donald Trump and others have long argued is out of control.
How much blame Walz should bear for the state’s response to the fraud is a matter of a debate. He has said that, as state executive, he takes ultimate responsibility. Walz has said officials have “made systematic changes to state government” over the past few years as prosecutions were underway. The governor’s critics say the changes were insufficient and came too late.
Democrats say Republicans are risking a backlash by fixating on the fraudsters’ nationality — most people charged in the schemes are of Somali descent — and by freezing some federal childcare funding in response. Trump has lobbed broad attacks on Somali immigrants that Walz denounced as “racist lies,” and many on the right have called for deportations, even though officials say most of the fraud defendants are U.S. citizens.
Democrats are favored to win the governor’s race in 2026; Republicans have not won a statewide election in Minnesota since 2006. Walz won reelection by about 8 percentage points in 2022, when some of the fraud cases had already surfaced, and it’s not clear that the new attention to the issue has affected his approval in the state. There are no clear recent shifts in available surveys.
Some Democrats remain worried the fallout threatens to blunt Walz’s attacks on Trump, as well as the economic issues the party has sought to highlight.
“The anti-fraud message is going to be very strong. … I fear that message will dominate or drown out the affordability message,” said Ember Reichgott Junge, a former Minnesota state senator who is now a Democratic political analyst.
Junge said she’s heard many Democrats express concern about Walz’s reelection campaign and noted that his performance could affect lower-profile races on the ballot. Democrats are defending a one-vote majority in the state Senate and trying to retake the House, where Republicans hold a two-seat advantage amid two vacancies.
“He is a riskier candidate than any other Democrat” would have been, she said of Walz, who has not drawn primary challengers so far.
Walz has accused Trump of politicizing the probes. Walz appointed a statewide “director of program integrity” to prevent fraud in mid-December, among other changes, and the state shut down one fraud-plagued housing program this fall.
“We have made significant progress. We have much more to do. And it’s my responsibility to fix it,” Walz wrote in a recent op-ed for the Minnesota Star Tribune.
His office did not make him available for an interview.
Other Democrats dismissed Republicans’ chances in the governor’s race, said the GOP response to the fraud has overreached and accused Trump — who has pardoned people convicted on fraud charges — of hypocrisy. Trump and others on the right have also attacked Walz in highly personal terms that many call cruel; Trump recently called Walz “seriously retarded,” and videos of people yelling “retard” outside Walz’s house have circulated online. (Walz has spoken about his son’s learning disability).
“Republicans are overplaying their hand, and this is what’s going to turn off a lot of voters,” said Abou Amara, a former adviser to Democratic leadership in the state legislature. “They have made this not just about fraud, but they’ve made it about xenophobia.”
Federal authorities in Minnesota have been investigating the sweeping abuse of safety net programs for years and brought many of the charges in 2022, accusing 47 people of misusing $250 million — meant to feed children during the pandemic — on luxury cars and property as far away as Kenya and Turkey.
News reports, a viral video and a flood of criticism from right-wing influencers and politicians have drawn new national attention to the issue in recent weeks. Federal investigators also suggested last month that the problem could be much bigger than previously known.
Joe Thompson, a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, said at a news conference last month that authorities have identified “significant fraud” in 14 state Medicaid programs — and said fraud may account for more than half of the $18 billion that went to those programs since 2018.
“Every day we look under a rock and find a new $50 million fraud scheme,” Thompson said.
Republican leaders including Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) have weighed in this past week, sharing a video posted on social media on Dec. 26 by a 23-year-old YouTuber, Nick Shirley, who joined a roundtable with Trump last year. In the 42-minute video, Shirley claimed daycare centers were not caring for children because he could not see them on-site. Regulators, however, saw children on their visits within the last 10 months, according to officials and records.
Shirley’s video has accumulated more than 130 million views on X and triggered a flood of GOP interest — and criticism of Walz. House Republicans said they would call Walz to testify before Congress next month. Right-leaning billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, suggested Walz should go to prison.
“Minnesotans are finally much more aware of the extent of the fraud and how deep it is and how it’s gone unchecked, and it is going to play favorably for Republicans on every level of government in the ’26 election,” said state House speaker Lisa Demuth, one of many candidates seeking the GOP nomination to challenge Walz.
Another GOP gubernatorial candidate, Minnesota Rep. Kristin Robbins — who chairs a House committee on fraud — called it the top issue in the race. “We are still, sadly, at the tip of the iceberg,” she said.
A 2024 report from the nonpartisan Minnesota Legislative Auditor found that the state education department, which administered nutrition programs at the center of many fraud cases, “failed to act on warning signs” and “created opportunities for fraud.” It did not point specifically at Walz.
Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota GOP who has crossed the aisle in the past to vote for Walz, said he isn’t sure how he’ll vote in the coming gubernatorial race, and argued that the Walz administration could have been more responsive. Voters, he said, will have to decide if state officials “have the credibility to be a part of the solution when maybe a lot of Minnesotans think they’re part of the problem.”
But he also warned that Trump’s rhetoric isn’t helping local Republicans. The president railed against Somali immigrants in a cabinet meeting last month, saying “they contribute nothing” and declaring, “Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country.”
Some Republicans in Minnesota want to leave race out of the debate — though they argue sensitivities about racism helped enable the fraud. (A nonprofit behind much of the fraud once accused a state agency of racial discrimination while pushing back on skepticism).
“We want to stay focused on the fraud and just the act itself, not on the culture or the people behind it,” Minnesota GOP chair Alex Plechash said in an interview, adding later, “I’m not at all into dividing the people by race or by socioeconomic status or any other way.”
At a Somali mall in Minneapolis, Kadar Abdi, a student at a nearby mosque, said he believes Trump is trying to turn attention away from his own political challenges. “Because of these failures, as a distraction tactic, you want to blame a marginalized group” he said. “It’s as old as American society.”
An hour away in Owatonna, an exurb of the Twin Cities, diners at the Kernel represented the full gamut of opinions. Trump voter Michael Haag, 54, said Walz “should be in prison” and that he plans to leave the state if Walz is reelected.
He “should resign, and I also think he should be charged, because he’s for the Somalis,” Haag said. “He should have been looking out for us, vs. them.”
Another patron wearing a pink Carhartt hat and sipping coffee disagreed.
“I find him honest,” said Joan Trandem, who is retired. “He cares about the small guy.”
Given the drama that’s surrounded Walz, Trandem said she’s surprised he wants to run for a third term. But if he continues with the campaign, she plans to vote for him. In the rural part of Minnesota where Trandem lives, the fraud probe doesn’t get much play anymore, she said. “I’m tired of talking about it.”
