Michele Tafoya might be more familiar to readers while speaking from the sidelines of the football gridiron during live coverage of the National Football League (NFL). After all, until recently, she worked as an NBC Sports reporter doing just that. But now, she’s stepping into a different kind of arena – politics – with a new run for U.S. Senate from the state of Minnesota. There’s a twist, with MN being a blue state; when making things official on Tuesday,Tafoya filed paperwork to run as a Republican.
NBC NEWS: Republican Michele Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter, to launch Minnesota Senate run tomorrow.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Rep. Angie Craig are both competing for the Democratic nod, following Sen. Tina Smith’s (D) announcement that she will not seek reelection https://t.co/5WfjweyzIQ pic.twitter.com/TCHWEtJxPB
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) January 21, 2026
Former NFL journalist Michele Tafoya filed paperwork on Tuesday to run for Minnesota Senate, giving a boost to Republicans as they look to flip retiring Sen. Tina Smith’s (D-Minn.) seat.
Tafoya, who worked as a “Sunday Night Football” sideline reporter for NBC Sports Group until 2022, has been widely speculated to be a potential GOP Senate candidate.
…
Tafoya’s entry into the race delivers Republicans a key recruit in the state and will force Democrats to spend at least some money in a blue-leaning state, especially as they have grappled with a statewide fraud scandal.
In mid-December 2025, OutKick reported that Tafoya was considering a Senate run, after a handful of years of working as a political commentator after leaving the sports gig.
The move comes after Sen. Smith’s announcement in Feb. 2025, stating that she would eschew running for reelection in 2026, and instead would retire from Congress.
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Tafoya appears to be welcome, new blood for a MN Republican Party hoping to end a 15-year drought of state-wide elected officials in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. The last GOP pol to attain victory in the blue state was Governor Tim Pawlenty, who served two terms until 2011.
Of course, it’s also a state that’s very much in the public eye over the Somali childcare fraud scandal, among other alleged frauds being allowed to fester in the upper Midwest state through decades of mismanagement and failing progressive policies by Democrat lawmakers. And it happens just days after the Trump Justice Department served subpoenas to Democrat leaders, including Gov. Tim Walz, state AG Keith Ellison, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and a raucous invasion of a Baptist church by the anti-ICE mob.
READ MORE: Here We Go: DOJ Serves Subpoenas on Offices of MN Officials Including Walz, Frey, Ellison
New: The Cowardice of Tim Walz Is on Full Display After Anti-ICE Agitators Invade Minnesota Church
Tafoya spoke about the critical challenges that will lie ahead for whoever wins the Senate seat, in a new sit-down with women’s and girls’ sports advocate and Fox News host, Riley Gaines.
Watch:
Career politicians like Tim Walz and radical Democrats have made our state a national punchline. I am running for the United States Senate to return commonsense leadership to our great state.
Thank you, @Riley_Gaines_, for allowing me to share my vision and why Minnesota is… pic.twitter.com/dORHyN9vAr
— Michele Tafoya (@Michele_Tafoya) January 21, 2026
Gaines opened with the familiar downbeat idea that some people outside Minnesota (or states across the country with liberal dysfunction wrought by decades of Dem reign like New York, Illinois, and California) have, when they proclaim that the state “is simply too far gone.” She queried Tafoya on what she thinks is the solution to MN’s many woes, as a longtime resident.
Michele Tafoya agreed that her state is suffering from nothing short of a “crisis of leadership,” but she struck a hopeful tone, saying that she would not have run “if I thought the state was too far gone.”
“We just have had this constant string of career politicians,” she explained,” like our governor, Tim Walz, running things – frankly, running them into the ground – and it is not going to be these career politicians that (sic) clean things up.”
“Some of us have to step up and clean up this mess,” she added, saying she’s “lived in Minnesota for over 30 years. I’ve raised my family here, and I can remember the Minnesota” that was safe and had good schools. But, Tafoya said, “we have gone backwards.” She insists that what is happening now is “fixable” with a Republican in the mix going forward.
She released an announcement about her candidacy for the Senate public servant job on her X account on Wednesday morning.
Watch:
For years, I walked the sidelines when the stakes were the highest, and that job taught me how leadership really works.
I’m running for U.S. Senate to bring that experience to Washington and deliver the real results Minnesota deserves. pic.twitter.com/vDbHWpAXg9
— Michele Tafoya (@Michele_Tafoya) January 21, 2026
Editor’s Note: Democrat politicians and their radical supporters will do everything they can to interfere with and threaten ICE agents enforcing our immigration laws.
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