Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth pressed Sen. Amy Klobuchar over Minnesota's welfare fraud scandal in their first debate, asking why she did not do more.
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Republican state House Speaker Lisa Demuth faced off Oct. 19 for the first time and immediately traded fire over the massive fraud that has hung over Minnesota politics for nearly a year.
The race to replace Gov. Tim Walz unfolded against pandemic-era welfare assistance schemes that siphoned hundreds of millions, and potentially billions, of taxpayer dollars from federal and state programs. Walz abandoned his 2026 re-election bid and has taken full responsibility for the scandal.
Fox News reported that Demuth repeatedly steered the business forum hosted by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce back to the fraud and worked to link the longtime senator to the governor's record.
Demuth set the tone early.
Lisa Demuth said:
"We have allowed a culture of waste and fraud to go on far too long and we can’t keep going this way,"
She then turned the question directly on her opponent.
Demuth said:
"You could have reached out to the governor and said I think we have a problem in Minnesota... Why didn't you do more."
Klobuchar answered by distancing herself from Walz and claiming she would have stopped the theft.
Amy Klobuchar said:
"I have been very clear. I would have caught that fraud. I would have done something about it. We have very different backgrounds."
She added that once the fraud became public she contacted the Justice Department and asked for more resources, saying the move produced additional federal prosecutors on the case. "That’s doing the real work," Klobuchar said.
Demuth kept pressing on oversight, asking why Klobuchar skipped hearings when Minnesotans raised alarms.
Demuth said:
"Why weren’t you at the hearings about fraud in your own Senate Judicial Committee hearing when we had Minnesotans who were concerned about fraud."
Klobuchar replied that she has appeared at a dozen hearings raising questions about fraud and that the specific session Demuth cited was a subcommittee she did not sit on.
The exchange lands in a state still absorbing the scale of the losses. The same fraud scandals dogging Minnesota Democrats have already reshaped the Senate contest and now define the race for governor.
Demuth pledged a clean break if elected. She said she would fire all of the commissioners in the state of Minnesota to start fresh after the scandal.
Klobuchar launched her gubernatorial bid in January, three weeks after Walz dropped out. She rolled up nearly 90 percent of the vote in the August Democratic primary and has won all four of her Senate races by healthy margins, including a nearly 16-point re-election in 2024. She previously served as Hennepin County attorney.
Demuth first won a Minnesota House seat in 2018, became GOP leader at the start of 2023, and has served as speaker for the past year and a half. She topped a crowded Republican primary, defeating MyPillow founder Mike Lindell by 11 points after President Donald Trump endorsed Lindell a month before the August 11 contest. She is aiming to become the first Republican in twenty years to win the governorship.
Polls show Klobuchar holding an upper-single-digit lead, and Fox News Power Rankings rate the race Likely Democrat. Yet the fraud issue refuses to fade, a point driven home again in the lone Senate debate focused on the same scandals.
The candidates also sparred over healthcare, gas prices, paid family and medical leave, insulin costs, and taxes.
Demuth tied rising bills to the Affordable Care Act and Klobuchar’s past support for it.
Demuth said:
"We must recognize that our healthcare costs have exploded across the country and in Minnesota because of the Affordable Care Act,"
She continued that promises the law would lower costs and expand access have not matched reality. "That is absolutely untrue where we find ourselves today," Demuth said.
Both candidates closed the door on higher taxes. Demuth declared tax hikes "absolutely off the table." Klobuchar said she has made clear she is not going to increase taxes and has been willing to take on her own party on the issue in the past.
Voters watching the fraud fight have already seen Klobuchar’s fraud-fighting record face scrutiny as she seeks the state’s top job. The debate offered her another chance to draw a bright line between her record and Walz’s. Demuth used the stage to argue the line is not bright enough.
Federal pressure has already arrived in other forms. The Trump administration freeze of Medicaid payments over suspected fraud underscored how far the problem has traveled beyond St. Paul.
Klobuchar entered the race as the heavy favorite with a long Senate résumé and a commanding primary win. Demuth entered as the underdog who survived a crowded primary and now has a single, repeated question: what did the state’s senior Democrat do while hundreds of millions vanished?
The first debate did not settle that question. It put the question in the middle of the race and left it there for Minnesota voters to answer.
Taxpayers who watched the money leave deserve more than late calls for extra prosecutors and competing claims about hearings.