Longtime sports reporter Michele Tafoya is leaning toward running for Senate from her home state of Minnesota, a source familiar with the situation told The Post Tuesday.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has been recruiting Tafoya in the hope of clearing the Republican field in the Land of 10,000 Lakes while Democrats gear up for a messy primary pitting Rep. Angie Craig against the progressive favorite, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan.
Tafoya, 60, met with the NRSC, Senate Leadership Fund, and other stakeholders in DC last week, the source added, and is expected to make a final decision early in the new year.
The Minnesota Senate seat is being vacated by Democrat Tina Smith, who announced in February that she would not seek a second full term.
A California native, Tafoya worked as a host and reporter for Minneapolis sports radio station KFAN before being hired by CBS Sports in 1994.
Tafoya later worked for ABC Sports and ESPN before spending more than a decade at NBC as the sideline reporter for the network’s top-ranked “Sunday Night Football” broadcasts. She departed the Peacock Network following the 2021-22 NFL season, with Super Bowl LVI between the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals serving as her final assignment.
Days after her depature from sports media, Tafoya told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that she was not forced out, but rather had “been waking up every day with a palpable pull at my gut that my side, my view, my middle-ground moderate viewpoint, is not being represented to the rest of the world.”
In November 2021, Tafoya had appeared on “The View,” where she defended people hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine and complained that her children’s schools had separated kids of different skin colors into “affinity groups.”
“My son’s first best friend was a little African-American boy. They were inseparable,” Tafoya said on the ABC panel show. “Get to a certain age, and they start having what’s called an affinity group, which means you go to lunch with people who look like you. Suddenly, my son wasn’t hanging out with him anymore.”
“Why are we even teaching that the color of your skin that matters? To me what matters is the character in your heart and your values.”
