Former NFL sideline reporter and broadcaster Michele Tafoya secured one of the biggest political wins of her career on Tuesday when she secured a decisive victory in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate primary in Minnesota.
Tafoya secured well over 50-percent of the primary votes - an impressive total of over 210,000 of the 400,000-plus votes that were cast. No other Republican candidate mustered even 25-percent of the vote.
And she managed to do so without even securing the endorsement of President Donald Trump beforehand. Her most notable endorsements have come from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, U.S. Senator Tim Scott and NFL broadcasters Tony Dungy and Jason Garrett.
On to November
Tafoya might find winning the general election a little bit harder, even if she does manage to get President Trump's endorsement over the next few months.
Minnesota has gone to Democrats in almost every statewide election for over a decade and Democratic candidate Peggy Flanagan crushed her primary even harder than Tafoya did. Flanagan received over 400,000 votes for nearly 60-percent of the ballots cast. She has endorsements from over a dozen current U.S. Congresspeople, state officials, political action committees, labor unions and even YouTubers.
That said, the polling does seem to leave room for Tafoya to eke out a win. A July poll by Impact Research showed Flanagan leading Tafoya by three points with seven-percent remaining undecided. If Tafoya can capture those undecideds, she might have a chance.
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Tafoya spent over 25 years in sports media, starting at CBS Sports in the 1990s before joining ESPN in 2000 and becoming the sideline reporter for Monday Night Football.
In 2011, Tafoya joined NBC in 2011 as the replacement for Andrea Kramer on Sunday Night Football. She would work in the role until 2022, when she left the network to go into politics.
