Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Amy Klobuchar is campaigning on fighting fraud, but a review of more than 1,000 of her Senate press releases found she never once mentioned the state's sprawling Feeding Our Future scandal.
Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Amy Klobuchar has made fighting fraud the centerpiece of her campaign, but a review of her own record raises a pointed question: where was she when the state's biggest corruption scandal was breaking? A review of more than 1,000 official press releases from her Senate office spanning January 2022 through December 2025 found not a single mention of the Feeding Our Future scandal, the sprawling social services fraud case that prosecutors say could top $9 billion.
The finding lands weeks before the general election and hands her Republican opponent, Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, a ready-made line of attack. Klobuchar breezed through the Democratic primary and enters November as the favorite to replace Gov. Tim Walz, who dropped his reelection bid amid the scandal. But Demuth argues the fraud-focused campaign message does not survive contact with the record.
Klobuchar's Senate office issued press releases addressing other forms of fraud between 2022 and 2025, according to the review. Yet none of the more than 1,000 releases from that window mentioned Feeding Our Future, "Minnesota fraud," "social services fraud," "Medicaid fraud," "autism fraud," "Housing Stabilization Services," "child nutrition fraud," "DHS fraud," or "nonprofit fraud."
The $250 million Feeding Our Future scandal broke in late January 2022 and has since ballooned into a broader social services fraud crisis. Prosecutors say the overall scheme could total more than $9 billion in stolen taxpayer money. For Klobuchar, a 20-year senator, the silence stands out.
"As Feeding Our Future was breaking and all of the fraud that was being talked about, the absent voice that I was noticing was Senator Klobuchar," Demuth said in an interview Friday.
Demuth, who released her own plan to fight fraud this week, did not stop there. She noted that Klobuchar did not attend a recent hearing on the fraud crisis despite her long tenure in Washington. "She with her extended time, twenty years as a senator, could have held hearings," Demuth said.
"My question is, where were you for the last 10 years, but absolutely the last eight years?" Demuth said. "She could have done press conferences, she could have partnered with Governor Walz."
Klobuchar's fraud-focused pivot is new. Since announcing her run for governor, she has campaigned on the issue, including a campaign ad earlier this month promising a state audit on her first day in office to "root out waste fraud and abuse." She posted on X: "It's time for results, not excuses."
The timing is hard to miss. Klobuchar spent years praising Walz, calling him an "exceptional governor" and heaping accolades on him during his vice presidential run. Now she is campaigning to replace him after his administration was consumed by the fraud crisis, and the state's final fraud report pinned oversight failures on his tenure.
Demuth, who became House Speaker in 2025 and quickly established the Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee, says the contrast is the whole election.
"Who are Minnesotans gonna trust for their next governor?" Demuth said. "Somebody that has just decided to talk about fraud now that they're running for office or someone that has been fighting fraud this entire time?"
The question now is whether Klobuchar's record -- and her ties to Walz -- erode her standing in a race she was expected to win. Republican candidates across Minnesota have been pressing the fraud issue, arguing voters of every party are angry about the billions in alleged losses.
Demuth framed the race as a test of trust. "Billions of our tax dollars stolen," she posted on X. "It's time for change."
With the midterm clock running and voters still digesting the final fraud report, Minnesota's governor race has become a referendum on who actually fought for the taxpayers. Klobuchar's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Amy Klobuchar is campaigning on fighting fraud, but a review of more than 1,000 of her Senate press releases found she never once mentioned the state's sprawling Feeding Our Future scandal.
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