A Minnesota daycare owner whose business collected millions in public childcare funding while accumulating years of licensing violations is headed to the state House.
The result is official enough to carry real consequences: the votes have been counted, and the candidate will soon help oversee the same kind of taxpayer-funded programs that put his business under scrutiny.
DFL candidate Abdi Daisane defeated Republican Mike Conway in Minnesota House District 14A, flipping a Republican-held seat in the politically divided St. Cloud area.
The anger behind that reaction comes from the record of Blooming Kids Child Care Center, the St. Cloud business Daisane owns.
Alpha News reported that unofficial results from all 18 precincts gave Daisane 9,163 votes, or 51.59%, to Conway’s 8,570 votes, or 48.25%. The 593-vote margin was enough to send Daisane to the Legislature after he lost a previous run for the same seat in 2024.
The outlet’s earlier investigation found that Blooming Kids had received more than $7.29 million through Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program since 2018, along with nearly $600,000 in approved claims through a federally funded food program. Those are public programs intended to help low-income families obtain childcare and meals for children.
But the numbers are only one part of the story.
Alpha News reported a history of state licensing violations involving hazardous objects accessible to children, cleanliness problems, and failures to supervise children at all times. A former worker at a neighboring business also said they did not recall seeing children enter or leave the facility, while acknowledging that a rear entrance was outside their view.
That caveat matters. So does another one.
The food-program claims were approved under a sponsor that later agreed to an $18.5 million settlement over broader fraud allegations, but Blooming Kids was not named in that case. The documented record raises obvious oversight questions, yet it does not by itself prove Daisane committed a crime.
The election result still stunned people following Minnesota’s sprawling public-benefits scandals.
MPR News independently confirmed that Daisane won with about 52% of the vote and defeated Conway, the current president of the St. Cloud City Council. Daisane, a small-business owner who came to the United States more than 15 years ago, will become the St. Cloud area’s first Somali American state lawmaker.
The result was part of a wider DFL breakthrough around St. Cloud. Voters also returned DFL state Sen. Aric Putnam and elected DFL candidate Zach Dorholt in the neighboring House district, meaning the region will send three DFL legislators to the Capitol next year.
That broader context helps explain how Daisane won, but it does not erase the questions attached to the business he owns.
Those questions go directly to the responsibilities of a legislator.
State lawmakers write budgets, oversee agencies, decide how taxpayer-funded programs operate, and determine what safeguards exist when public money flows to private providers. Daisane will now help make those decisions while scrutiny follows the funding and compliance history of his own childcare center.
Fox News Digital visited the Blooming Kids facility and brought the local reporting to a national audience on Friday. Its report described a small outdoor play area at the center and documented the wave of online outrage that followed the election result.
The outlet also reviewed state records showing repeated licensing findings from 2019 through 2025, including problems involving staff supervision, cleanliness, training documentation, and potentially hazardous items within children’s reach. It reported that Blooming Kids remained licensed for up to 99 children despite that compliance history.
Fox further noted that Daisane did not answer its request for comment before publication. That leaves the most important questions unresolved: how many children the center regularly serves, how the public reimbursements were calculated, what corrective steps followed the violations, and whether those steps fixed the underlying problems.
The national attention is likely to intensify pressure for records, answers, and a clear accounting of how the childcare and food-program money was used. It also gives Daisane an opportunity to answer the reporting directly, explain his center’s operations, and show voters what standards he believes taxpayer-funded providers should meet.
Those answers should be specific.
Minnesota voters made their choice, and the result is legitimate.
But winning an election does not place a candidate’s business record beyond examination. If anything, public office raises the standard because the candidate is no longer asking only for trust—he is taking responsibility for public money and public law.
Daisane’s supporters can celebrate a historic victory for St. Cloud’s Somali American community.
Taxpayers can demand a full explanation of the millions in subsidies, the documented licensing violations, and the safeguards that should apply to every provider receiving public funds.
Those two things can be true at the same time.
The seat is won. The questions are not going away.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at 100 Percent Fed Up. View the original article here.
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[ H/T WLT Report ]
