Somali daycare owner flips Republican seat in Minnesota statehouse
His center drew $7.29 million in childcare subsidies that more than tripled in three years, attorney general's office did not answer whether the center was investigated
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Abdi Daisane was elected to represent the St. Cloud area in the Minnesota House. (Abdi Daisane for State Representative) / (Peter D'Abrosca/Fox News Digital)
Peter D'Abrosca/Fox News Digital
A small outdoor play area at the Blooming Kids Child Care Center in St. Cloud, Minn., on Nov. 5, 2026. The center is owned by state Representative-Elect Abdi Daisane. (Peter D'Abrosca/Fox News Digital)
Peter D'Abrosca/Fox News Digital
Minnesota voters have elected Abdi Daisane, a Somali American childcare centre owner, to the state House from the St. Cloud area, flipping a previously Republican-held district with roughly 52 percent of the vote against city council president Mike Conway. Daisane, St. Cloud's first Somali American state lawmaker, is CEO of Blooming Kids Child Care Center, which received $7.29 million in state childcare assistance payments from 2018 through 2025 — figures posted by the Minnesota House's own Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee, drawing on data from the Department of Children, Youth, and Families.
The payments more than tripled in three years, from $439,034 in 2021 to $1.54 million in 2024 and $1.52 million in 2025. The centre also drew almost $600,000 in approved claims since late 2020 from the federally funded Child and Adult Care Food Program, according to state education department records. From 2020 into early 2022 its food-program sponsor was Partners in Nutrition — an organisation that agreed in September to dissolve permanently and hand over $18.5 million to settle a lawsuit in which attorney general Keith Ellison alleged it had billed the state for meals never served and facilitated fraud at the sites it monitored.
The Child Care Assistance Program pays providers who care for children from low-income families; in St. Cloud it has now sent one provider's CEO to the chamber that appropriates the money. Daisane, who lost the same race in 2024, was not named in the food-program lawsuit and has not been charged with any crime. Days before the election, the Justice Department uncovered another $29 million in Minnesota benefits fraud. Ellison's office continues to investigate people and entities affiliated with Partners in Nutrition under the state's False Claims Act; it did not respond when asked whether Daisane or his centre had been among them.