Brehm: Amid mounting fraud, it’s clear Walz doesn’t deserve a third term

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When I went to college in Southern California back in the early 2000s, I was one of those insufferable out-of-state students who couldn’t stop talking about my home state. I was so proud to be from Minnesota and bragged about it all the time.

The North Star State was unquestionably well run, boasted an economy that outpaced the nation, compassionately but competently cared for its needy and provided Minnesota children with a better education than anywhere else. Yeah, our taxes were a little high but, even for many Republicans, the rates seemed worth it. Minnesota undeniably worked and was firing on all cylinders.

My, how times have changed. Minnesota continues to make national headlines these days, but not for being a paragon of good governance as it once did. Instead, we have now become infamous as a hotbed for massive state government fraud. Over the past five years, swindlers have bilked Minnesota taxpayers out of more than one billion dollars and counting by defrauding the state’s generous entitlement programs. That’s more money than the entire 2025 state bonding bill. It has gotten much harder to defend Minnesota’s sky-high taxes when so much public money is landing in the pockets of criminals.

As chief executive of this state for nearly seven years, the buck stops with Gov. Tim Walz. This is a state government very much of his own creation. The commissioners who run state agencies are his appointees and serve at his pleasure. The culture of Minnesota’s bureaucracy is one he sets. The recent and enormous expansion of Minnesota’s welfare apparatus is what Walz asked for and DFL majorities in the Legislature gave him. So, how is all of that working out? Catastrophically.

In an organization as massive as Minnesota’s state government, some malfeasance is bound to happen. Even in the state’s best governed days, minor fraud occurred from time to time. But Minnesota has never seen anything on this scale. Even other big spending states such as California and Illinois have not experienced the widespread looting of the state treasury as we have here. That’s not by coincidence. It is a result of utter incompetence. And the governor should be held accountable for it.

To be sure, the fraudsters that perpetuated these crimes are ultimately responsible for them. But in a free and open society, we also have some obligation to protect our property, too. No one would have much sympathy for a robbed shopkeeper who failed to lock his doors at night — particularly after having been burglarized before. At the end of the day, Walz’s administration was chillingly and repeatedly derelict in its duty to safeguard state assets — even when the warning signs had been blaring for years. And it deserves significant blame for this theft, too.

I don’t know Walz personally and have no reason to believe he would intentionally perpetuate this kind of thing on the state I know he cares about. But his negligence, I think, is a result of severe distraction. In recent years, Walz has seemingly had little interest in the tasks of actual state governance. Instead, being in the national spotlight, appearing on MSNBC and speaking harsh words about the president have been his passion.

Let’s also remember, these scams are not new news. The massive $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud became public way back in early 2022. A strong governor would have accepted responsibility for it then and ordered a clamping down of payments going forward and a full audit of every inch of state government. A blue-ribbon commission would have been appointed to ensure necessary reforms were enacted so such public pilfering could never happen again. Minnesota would be in a much different and better protected position today if that had happened.

But in 2022, Walz opted to respond by deflecting blame onto others and assuring Minnesotans this was simply a onetime COVID-era-caused goof-up and otherwise all was well with how his administration was stewarding state money. His focus quickly moved on from the issue of fraud into pursuing a hard-left progressive agenda for Minnesota and a position for himself in national politics. Walz ended up getting the gig he wanted with Kamala Harris, but Minnesota is now suffering the consequences of that lack of attention to a severe problem that should and could have been nipped in the bud years ago.

In 2025, as the heat is back on Walz, he is back to blaming others and circumstances for the plundering that has taken place on his watch. On NBC’s Meet the Press this past Sunday, this is how he responded to a question about whether he should maintain any culpability: “I take responsibility for putting people in jail.” Seriously? Not only has he not put anyone in prison (credit for that sits with U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota and tough prosecutors like Andy Luger and Joe Thompson), but he hasn’t even fired even a single state employee over this. Accountability isn’t a thing in Walz’s world evidently. And it shows.