A GOP candidate has been caught deleting a post saying she was embarrassed to call the state she is running to represent home.
Former NFL reporter Michele Tafoya is the Republican Senate nominee in Minnesota in November’s midterms, and while on the campaign trail, she was challenged over comments she made on Twitter in March 2023.
“I’m embarrassed to say I live in Minnesota,” she said in the now-deleted post, which the Daily Beast saw via online archive software. “This state has gone so far left it’s amazing any of the snow still sticks.
The 61-year-old was grilled on the comment during an interview with a local radio station this September, CNN reports.
“If I were embarrassed to be from Minnesota, would I be running for the United States Senate to represent Minnesota?” the network reports her replying. She then claimed, “I have never said that.”
What she did admit, however, when asked about whether she had ever wanted to leave, is: “Two years ago I was in that place.”
“I think just over time watching my kids go through school,” she said, explaining what had changed since then. “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. This state means a lot to us.”
At the time, the 2023 comment was picked up by another Twitter user, who told her she could leave, to which she replied: “That’s the plan! Have a great day!”
CNN reports that when the user asked if she promised, she said, “Yes. I want to make you and your 35 followers happy.”
Tafoya’s comments three years ago came in response to comments from Minnesota’s lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan, the Democratic nominee whom she will run against in six weeks in the race to replace Sen. Tina Smith.
Flanagan had been talking to a crowd when she said, “When our children tell us who they are, it is our job as grown-ups to listen and to believe them. That’s what it means to be a good parent.” Tafoya shared a link to the clip when she made the comment.
This isn’t the first time she’s suggested she wanted to leave the state. Other internet archives show her speaking fondly of other places and expressing a willingness to turn her back on Minnesota.
When one person called Minnesota “California Midwest” filled with “Radical lunatics,” she said, “As a native Californian who moved to Minnesota in 1994, I know. Fleeing soon.”
In another post from 2024, she described herself as “a former Californian and a future former-Minnesotan (which is doing its best to copy the Golden State).”
Then, last year, in a response to a post from California Governor Gavin Newsom about a school shooting in Minnesota, she said, “You, @GavinNewsom, are sick for politicizing this tragedy while people are mourning! I was born in CA and left… I moved to Minnesota and will be leaving. The GOP is in charge of neither state.”
Her words have led the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party to call her “Minnesota’s Biggest Hater.”
Then, in September last year, on Beyond the Polls with Henry Olsen, she said, “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.”
She announced her candidacy for U.S. Senate four months later, and while she does not have Donald Trump’s endorsement, she has the RNC’s and has exhibited MAGA sensibilities.
Tafoya previously raised eyebrows when she told Americans to stop buying Starbucks if they are feeling the pinch due to the war in Iran.
“I know it’s frustrating, and I know it’s hard for people. What I would say to them is we’ve lost some service members over there who have put their lives on the line to protect us, to protect the region, protect America’s friends in the region,” she said on The Todd Starnes Radio Show.
“Maybe you take one less trip to Starbucks, and so that gas goes a little further, until this thing is over and these gas prices come back down again,” Tafoya said. “Let’s just try to be patriots about this. Whether you agree with it or not, we’re there and we’ve got to support our men and women in uniform. That’s a big one.”
The Daily Beast has contacted her campaign for comment.
