There are signs that Tafoya is trending down. Polls. Local MN reporting -
Michele Tafoya just got what most Republican candidates crave more than anything: President Donald Trump’s endorsement.She demurred.
“I heard about that,” Tafoya said when asked about it Tuesday. “Look, this campaign is about bringing all Minnesotans together, whether they voted for President Trump or whether they voted for Kamala Harris.”
This is significant, Trump is toxic in Minnesota, but she dismisses the Trump base, and then says going to the US Senate is not about federal politics but about "bringing all Minnesotans together." That is pure crap. She states no Iran or tariff opinions, as if a school board candidate. That is fantasy. She cannot be taken seriously for a senior federal office, except as a straddle/waffle who'll put a finger to the wind.
Why run if not on your beliefs? Or, what? She's stated none. Speculation is fair, on an illl-stated nothingburger policy stance, and a tactic of downplaying Trump's perception of closeness. So - What's up?
Before the MN primary, MinnPost reported:
Tafoya, who is married to Mark Vandersall, a private wealth advisor, reported that she and her husband’s assets were valued at between about $17 million and a little more than $33 million.
The couple’s assets, which do not include the value of a personal residence, included mutual funds — many of them invested in aggressive growth stocks — exchange traded funds (ETFs), cryptocurrency and individual stocks that favored the tech sector, including Nvidia, Alphabet (Google), Apple and Tesla.
Tafoya’s financial disclosure report also shows that her husband invested between $5,000 and $50,000 in the U.S. Oil Fund, a mutual fund based on West Texas crude futures that has boomed since the start of the war in Iran and the subsequent disruption of global petroleum shipments.
Candidates for the U.S. Senate are required to report income, assets and liabilities, but they do so in wide ranges so only a broad view of their financial disclosures are made public.
Tafoya’s report only listed one liability: a 4% interest loan from RiverSource Life Insurance Company valued at between $250,000 and $500,000.
(highlighting added) Portfolio directing Vandersall is not running. Tafoya is. He's got a business set to benefit if the name recognition w/o substance moves anyone's needle, so why not do the wife's dilettante-looking low out-of-pocket gamble? As an investment move.
That's how Crabgrass weighs the circumstances.
Access would be very likely to insider information if somehow Susie ends up making it into the seat. Pecuniary upside potential. Low cost run. Cost-benefit decision making says, "Why not?"
Come on. There has to be substance somewhere or bury the candicacy because a sound idea-oriented progressive is running on the other party's ticket. And leading the polls. What's to vote for with Tafoya besides a name and a portfolio?
SPECIFICALLY - When she games over Trump recognition, not for it, not against it, wtf?
Where's the sense in things?
Crabgrass has earlier kind of posted of this run for the roses before, but time has shown no substance, and now hiding from Trump, while solid issue-oriented opposition is in the DFL.
Policy commitments are there with Flanagan. Tafoya is an empty glass. And you can fairly speculate why.
* * *
In the Governor's race there is Klobuchar. Big-Stage Track Record, like it or not, it's there. Repeatedly reelected. Demuth, aside from the State House Party Caucus lead, what? Vouchers against full public education priority funding? Bleeding funds away that have been raised by taxes paid by those who have been childless and by those with adults who've left the nest, as well as paid by parents still in the system. Everyone having paid on an equal taxing basis for a Constitutionally mandated public good and not for anyone's faith-based or private whims or indoctrinations.
____________________UPDATE__________________
"Bringing Minnesotans together" for politically connected investment advice rings the Crabgrass bell less than the thought of Medicare for All, the end of endless wars, tariff sanity, getting along with Canada, and ICE behavior constraints. Just me, I guess, but how it is.