STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The U.S. Senate race in Minnesota is especially competitive. It's an open seat. A Democrat is retiring. So while Democrats expect to gain Senate seats elsewhere in the country, Republicans hope to gain a seat in Minnesota. Democratic voters this year are motivated by immigration after a Trump administration crackdown led to protests and deaths in Minnesota. President Trump and the Republican Party are also focused on immigrants - in particular, Somali Americans and Representative Ilhan Omar. Minnesota Public Radio's Clay Masters reports.
CLAY MASTERS, BYLINE: Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan sits in an elementary school library for a recent roundtable to talk about the local effects of President Trump's immigration enforcement.
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PEGGY FLANAGAN: If folks just want to introduce yourself, and then just...
MASTERS: Flanagan is the Democratic candidate for the open U.S. Senate race here. She says what happened in her state shows how the Trump administration wields its power, and it's what this midterm election is about.
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FLANAGAN: This is, I think, the model of what the most corrupt, cruel administration in our nation's history - what they can get away with when, you know, this goes unchecked. So this is a choice in this race.
MASTERS: Flanagan faces Republican Michele Tafoya, who is running as a moderate and has the endorsement of President Trump. At a debate earlier this month hosted by Minnesota Public Radio, Tafoya was asked to comment on how Operation Metro Surge was handled. She brings up the two Americans who were killed by federal agents that sparked nationwide protests.
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MICHELE TAFOYA: Those two things go hand in hand. The loss of Renee Good and Alex Pretti is devastating. I did not like the way that ICE rollout was handled by Kristi Noem, and she was appropriately fired. We also had a massive failure in leadership from Governor Tim Walz and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan.
MASTERS: The Trump administration used both alleged and proven fraud in state social service programs as part of its reason for targeting Minnesota. And now voters are being flooded with ads tying hundreds of millions of dollars in alleged fraud to the state's Democratic leaders, including Minnesota's governor, Tim Walz, the party's former vice presidential candidate. That speaks to conservative voter Dale Johnson. He's a retired snowplow driver who says he brings the issue up at his union meetings, only to be met with pushback.
DALE JOHNSON: And one of the fellow members said, oh, that was mostly federal money. As if, well, don't worry about it. It's federal money that they're blowing. That shows you that people aren't really using their head.
MASTERS: In the final weeks before election day, President Trump continues to focus on Minnesota. Here he is in the Oval Office just last week, talking about a new program to report suspected fraud. And he used the opportunity to attack Minnesota and its Somali American community.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I remember Minnesota in the old days. What a beautiful - with lakes all over the place. They have more lakes than any place I've ever seen. So beautiful. They've - they're destroying it. Probably - maybe they've destroyed it.
MASTERS: In that same appearance, Trump brought up the federal investigation into allegations of immigration fraud regarding Representative Ilhan Omar. The Minnesota congresswoman says it's an intimidation attempt ahead of the midterms. UC Berkeley law professor Ian Lopez studies the exploitation of race as a basis for mobilizing political support.
IAN LOPEZ: These allegations of fraud against people of color in Minnesota as a way to whip up racial resentment and to try and transmute that into political energy - those are classic techniques of dogmas of politics.
MASTERS: But immigration and fraud are among the issues Democrats and the Trump administration have been fighting over all year long, and the race for Minnesota's open U.S. Senate seat is closer than expected in a state that historically tilts blue.
For NPR News, I'm Clay Masters in Minneapolis.
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