There’s something almost poetic about the sheer brazenness of Minnesota politics right now. Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, who’s running for Senate as a Democrat, is heading to a fundraiser hosted by the very guy who served as the state’s Medicaid medical director while one of the biggest fraud scandals in recent memory exploded across Minnesota. You can’t make this stuff up.

Dr. Nathan Chomilo has held the position of Minnesota’s Medicaid medical director since January 2020. He’s listed right there as one of the hosts for Flanagan’s October 1 fundraiser. Now, technically speaking, Chomilo wasn’t the person cutting checks or investigating fraud or running the program integrity operations. But here’s the thing about optics in politics. They matter. A lot. And when the state you’re governing experiences a massive hemorrhaging of taxpayer dollars through Medicaid fraud, particularly in autism services and housing stabilization programs, you might want to keep some distance from the people who were supposed to be minding the store.

Republican state representative Kristin Robbins put it plainly. She chaired the last legislative session’s Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee, so she knows exactly what she’s talking about. “The number one thing going on with Minnesota’s Medicaid program has been fraud over the last eight years of the Walz Flanagan administration,” Robbins said. “So he must have been aware. He must have known and clearly he had oversight responsibilities.”

Instead of being held accountable, Chomilo is raising money for Flanagan. That’s not just bad optics. That’s a middle finger to every Minnesota taxpayer who watched their hard-earned money vanish into fraudulent schemes while state officials apparently looked the other way.

The broader context here matters because Minnesota’s fraud problem isn’t some minor bookkeeping error. We’re talking about Medicaid-funded programs that became cash cows for fraudsters, many tied to nonprofit organizations that were supposed to be helping vulnerable populations. Autism services. Housing assistance. Programs that should have been lifelines became ATMs for criminals. And the people responsible for oversight? Well, they’re busy now. Busy fundraising.

Chomilo’s own words reveal a lot about his priorities. In a 2023 profile, right when warning signs about Medicaid fraud were surfacing, he talked about “incorporating community collaboration and racial equity into Minnesota’s Medicaid policy development.” He said communities experiencing inequities know what they need but policymakers fail to incorporate their lived experience. Noble sentiments, perhaps. But where was the lived experience of taxpayers watching billions disappear?

His LinkedIn and social media presence tells you even more about where his focus lies. Calls to defund ICE. Promoting boycotts of Target for ending DEI initiatives. Lamenting “Zionism in medicine today” on Instagram. This is the guy Flanagan chose to help raise money for her Senate campaign. Birds of a feather, as they say.

Robbins didn’t mince words about what this says regarding Flanagan’s priorities. “It just shows her disdain for the taxpayers,” she said, adding that Flanagan has “shown time and again disdain for Minnesotans who aren’t on board with her radical agenda and this is just another example of that.”

Conservative critics have been pointing out for years that when government grows too big and accountability becomes too diffuse, fraud becomes inevitable. Minnesota proves the point beautifully. You create massive programs with billions in funding, staff them with people more concerned about equity frameworks than actual oversight, and then act shocked when criminals treat the whole operation like a personal piggy bank.

The Walz-Flanagan administration has presided over eight years of this mess. Eight years. That’s not an accident or an oversight. That’s a pattern. That’s a choice about priorities. And now Flanagan wants Minnesota voters to promote her to the United States Senate, where she can presumably bring this same careful stewardship to federal programs.

What’s most galling isn’t just the fraud itself. It’s the apparent indifference to it. When your response to a massive scandal is to fundraise with one of the officials who presided over the debacle, you’re sending a clear message. You don’t think you did anything wrong. You don’t think there’s any accountability owed. You think voters are too stupid or too tribal to care.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe Minnesota voters will shrug and send Flanagan to Washington anyway. But they shouldn’t. Every dollar stolen through Medicaid fraud was a dollar that could have helped someone who actually needed it. Every fraudulent claim processed was a betrayal of public trust. And every official who watched it happen without sounding the alarm should be answering tough questions, not hosting fundraisers.

The old saying goes that personnel is policy. Who you surround yourself with tells us everything about what you value and what you’ll tolerate. Flanagan’s choice to associate with Chomilo, to accept his fundraising help, to stand beside someone who was part of the apparatus that failed so spectacularly, tells Minnesota voters exactly what kind of senator she’d be. One more concerned with ideology than integrity. One more interested in advancing an agenda than protecting taxpayers. One who thinks accountability is for other people.

Related: Trump Task Force Finds $1.2 Billion in Suspected Fraud From Pandemic Contracts Nobody Was Watching