The 1988 Berkeley graduate and former NFL sideline reporter, now the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee, is within three points of Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in recent polls.
For two decades, Michele Tafoya’s job was to deliver the news from the edge of the field in the closing minutes. With eight days left in Minnesota’s Senate race, she is the one under the lights.
Ms. Tafoya, the former NBC and ESPN sideline reporter and the Republican nominee for the seat being vacated by Senator Tina Smith, trails Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor nominee, by 48 percent to 45 percent in a Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,182 likely voters taken Oct. 20 and 21, within the poll’s three-point margin of error. Seven percent were undecided. The RealClearPolling average of five October surveys puts Ms. Flanagan ahead by 3.4 points, and every poll in that average shows her leading by three or four. The site rates the race a tossup.
A win for Ms. Tafoya would flip a Democratic-held seat and give Republicans their first statewide victory in Minnesota in 20 years, according to RealClearPolling’s race analysis.
A Berkeley start
Ms. Tafoya is a 1988 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, listed among the Cal Alumni Association’s notable alumni as “Michele Tafoya ’88, NFL sideline reporter.” She ranks No. 90 on Sports Illustrated’s Cal 100, a list of the most influential people associated with Cal athletics, which notes her five Sports Emmy Awards and her years on “Monday Night Football” and “Sunday Night Football.”
The family tie to Berkeley runs deeper. Her father, Orlando Tafoya, competed in track and field for the Golden Bears, according to a 2014 profile in Cal Sports Quarterly.
She left NBC in 2022 and turned to political commentary and podcasting before entering the Senate race.
The Trump endorsement, and the distance
President Trump endorsed Ms. Tafoya in the days before the candidates’ only scheduled debate, held Oct. 16 at Minnesota Public Radio. The endorsement has become a central argument for both sides.
“Let’s be clear: Donald Trump doesn’t just endorse anybody,” Ms. Flanagan said at the debate, according to MPR News. “Michele Tafoya passed his litmus test with flying colors. She supports the tariffs, the trade wars, the war in Iran.” She has described her opponent as a likely “rubber stamp” for the president.
Ms. Tafoya, who has campaigned as an “independent thinker” willing to break with her party, defended the president’s tariffs as leverage to reset trade terms. “The playing field has not been even, and it’s been both sides of the aisle, quite frankly, that have led to this,” she said. “What we’re asking for is to level the playing field, to bring partners to the table to say, let’s renegotiate this.”
On Iran, she said that she had supported U.S. intervention earlier in the year but that the war had gone on too long. “The prices are too high. This war does need to end, and it needs to end quickly,” she said. “But it also needs to end strategically.”
Fraud, immigration and abortion
Ms. Tafoya’s central argument has been about state government. She has pressed Ms. Flanagan on reports of hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud in Minnesota-administered programs during the Walz-Flanagan administration. “My goodness, she was second in charge in this state, and she’s just going to point her finger at Gov. Tim Walz when she demanded it be the Walz-Flanagan administration,” she said at the debate. Ms. Flanagan responded that Mr. Walz had taken responsibility for addressing fraud and that her own work had focused on other priorities, including paid family and medical leave and free school meals.
On the federal immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis last winter, Ms. Tafoya called the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were shot by federal immigration officers, devastating, and said the operation had been handled poorly by the former homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem. She placed much of the blame for the unrest on state leaders. Ms. Flanagan said Ms. Tafoya had shifted her position on the operation over the campaign and had blamed Ms. Good for her own death. Ms. Tafoya interjected: “That is a hideous statement.”
Ms. Tafoya describes herself as a “pro-choice Republican.” She has said she supports “reasonable access” to abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and said at the debate, “I have no desire from the United States Senate to change that law,” though a letter she wrote to Republican delegates this spring opposed Minnesota’s current abortion-rights law. She has pledged to confirm “conservative, strict-constructionist judges” and to oppose taxpayer funding of abortion, MPR reported. Ms. Flanagan supported the state’s 2023 law guaranteeing abortion rights.
On Social Security, Ms. Flanagan proposed applying the payroll tax to earnings above $250,000. Ms. Tafoya did not lay out a plan, saying the Senate needs “independent thinkers” willing to work across the aisle. She favors term limits of two or three terms for senators; Ms. Flanagan opposes them.
The math
The Rasmussen survey shows a familiar shape. Ms. Flanagan wins 91 percent of Democrats and Ms. Tafoya 87 percent of Republicans. Voters unaffiliated with either party split 46 percent for Ms. Tafoya and 43 percent for Ms. Flanagan, with 11 percent undecided. Women favor Ms. Flanagan by 14 points; men favor Ms. Tafoya by nine.
Kamala Harris carried Minnesota 51 percent to 47 percent in 2024, with Mr. Walz as her running mate. RealClearPolling’s analysts note that Republican gains on the Iron Range and in the exurbs have offset Democratic strength in the Twin Cities, keeping recent statewide contests close.
Ms. Flanagan won the DFL primary in August over Representative Angie Craig with nearly 59 percent of the vote, according to RealClearPolling. Three other candidates are also on the ballot or running as write-ins.
For Berkeley, the result will settle whether the campus adds a senator to an alumni roster that already runs through Congress, statehouses and the Fed. For Ms. Tafoya, the remaining question is the one RealClearPolling’s analysts pose: whether she can get to 46 or 47 percent.
Imogen Saltzman covers UC Berkeley alumni in the arts, letters, culture and public life, including the controversies and courtroom fights that put them in the headlines, for the Inquirer’s Berkeley Alumni desk. More from Imogen Saltzman
