Bad timing for Somali-born day-care owner running for Minnesota legislature

This is what you call bad timing.

A Somali-born day-care owner recently announced he is running for state legislature in Minnesota — where his community and business field have been engulfed in an explosive billion-dollar fraud scandal.

Abdi Daisane, who is not accused in the up to $9 billion web of alleged fraud, announced Christmas Eve that he plans to take another shot at the statehouse in the 2026 midterm elections after he was defeated by the Republican incumbent in 2024.

He also suffered a failed City Council bid in 2016.

Daisane has said he opened his day-care business, Blooming Kids Child Center, in St. Cloud in 2018 because he saw a need for early-childhood education.

He has made affordable childcare one of the key issues of his campaigns.

“There’s higher needs for childcare in greater Minnesota, so when I saw the need for childcare, and I found the opportunity to open one, I jumped on it,” he told the St. Cloud Times before his 2024 election loss.

He also has been found in violation of many state requirements involving the business, according to the Minnesota Department of Human Services.

Since 2021, Blooming Kids Child Center, which has a capacity of 113 children, has been slapped even with offenses that repeated year to year.

It was accused of everything from lacking proper kiddie medical information to documentations showing its workers meet the required qualifications, to not enough staff and poorly maintained equipment, although all of the violations have since been addressed, the outlet said.

Daisane accepted responsibility for the infractions – although he said he thinks the state needs to step in, too, to help with child care centers with staffing shortages, which are largely a result of low pay and lack of benefits, the Times said.

“We have difficulties in recruiting folks to work at the daycare for obvious reasons,” he told the outlet.

Daisane’s campaign did not respond to a Post request for comment Monday on whether the unrelated state fraud scandal could have any impact on his 2026 race.

Dozens of members of Minnesota’s Somali community have been accused in the bilking of hundreds of millions of dollars in government aid meant for the needy. The alleged scam includes local supposed day-care centers that raked in massive amounts of dough by lying they were providing services to the poor.

In a now-viral video allegedly exposing some of the illicit day-care scammers, the centers appeared empty even as they were receiving millions of government dollars in the past several years. One of the suspect daycares had a misspelled sign — as it got $4 million in taxpayer money.

FBI Director Kash Patel claimed yesterday that the current allegations were “just the tip of a very large iceberg” as he threatened to deport convicted Somali scammers and any illegal migrants tied to them.

The alleged fraud schemes reportedly date back at least a decade, when the day-care centers were accused of overcharging Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program.

More recent alleged scams have involved Medicaid-funded disability schemes, including a housing program that is supposed to help seniors and disabled people find and move into housing.

Federal prosecutors have estimated that the extent of the rampant fraud could total $9 billion.

Daisane, a Democratic–Farmer–Labor candidate, was born in Somalia before he was forced to flee the civil war there for the US. He made his first bid running to represent District 14A in 2024 but was defeated by incumbent Republican Bernie Perryman 56.3% to 43.5%. Perryman said she does not plan to run again next year.