It’s been nearly 20 years since Minnesota elected a Republican governor.
The former House Speaker Tim Pawlanty (R-MN) was the last conservative to earn that distinction, winning consecutive terms in 2002 and then 2006. Since 2010, the Democratic-Farmers-Labor party, or DFL as it is commonly known in Minnesota, has ruled the political roost in the Land of the Lakes. But the MAGA stalwart and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is hoping to loosen the blue grip in Minnesota, announcing this week his intentions to run for governor of the state in 2026. In a statement broadcast to his eponymous platform, Lindell said he is “up to the task.”
At a rally in North Carolina on December 19, Trump spoke kindly of Lindell, although he stopped short of a full endorsement. “These people went after him, they went after his company,” Trump said of Lindell. “They did that with me, too, but at least I knew what I was getting into. He fought like hell. That guy deserves to be governor of Minnesota.” In comments following the president’s rally, Lindell was careful not to call the positive words a full endorsement: “I did not take that as an endorsement. It’s a shoutout.”
But for Lindell, who faced extended legal scrutiny for vocally backing Trump during the fallout from the 2020 presidential election, the president’s comments in Rocky Mount were a green-light to get moving in a crowded Republican primary field featuring Lisa Demuth, the speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and Scott Jensen, a former state senator who ran for governor in 2022.
Despite nearly a dozen Republicans vying for the nominee, Lindell is looking beyond his primary opponents. In his announcement speech a week before Christmas, Lindell was laser-focused on the Democratic Governor Tim Walz, whom he accused of defrauding millions from the state via pandemic-era welfare programs.
“The governor is the chief executive of the state,” Lindell said. “He is responsible for the integrity of government operations under his authority. I will stand for you against the rampant fraud under Governor Walz. I will stand for you against crime and threats to the safety of your family.”
Lindell, who overcame drug addiction to become a self-made millionaire, has deep ties to the state. He was born and raised in Minnesota and briefly attended the state’s flagship university before dropping out. His colorful background includes stints as a card-counter in Las Vegas and various gigs in retail throughout the 1980s before creating MyPillow in 2004. After years of steady success selling his products in malls and at trade shows, Lindell’s business took off when the bombastic businessman turned to infomercials in 2011.
Though official polling has yet to be released for the Republican primary with Lindell’s profile included, traders on the prediction market platform Polymarket currently have Lindell as the odds-on favorite. At time of writing, the salesman leads the big field with a 46 percent chance of securing the nomination. Lindell’s competitiveness comes as no surprise to those who follow the MAGA right closely where Lindell has crafted an image of himself as an outsider and a fighter, consistently appearing on the War Room podcast with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist.
Should Lindell secure the GOP’s nomination, the issue of immigration is likely to play a major role in the general election. Trump has singled out the Somali community of Minneapolis, calling its members “garbage” and telling the immigrant population to “go back to where they came from and fix it.” Trump has zeroed in on the Somali population in Minneapolis following the fallout from a major fraud scandal in which federal authorities found that a group of mostly Somali residents stole potentially over $1 billion in taxpayer money.
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Despite the president’s advocacy for Lindell, not all Republicans in Minnesota are thrilled with the idea of his campaign. Speaking with POLITICO on Thursday, Dustin Grage, a Minnesota Republican strategist, said the GOP “would lose pretty badly if Mike Lindell were to get the nomination.”
Standing in Lindell’s way is Walz, the former Democratic vice president nominee who won the Minnesota governor’s race comfortably in 2018 and 2022. Walz is still reasonably popular in a state that never once selected Trump for president, so some state pundits have stressed the issues in running an outsider candidate—despite the fact that in 1998 Minnesota picked the ultimate outsider candidate, the former wrestling star Jesse Ventura, to be governor on the Reform Party ticket.
For Lindell to win, he’ll need to convince the citizens of Minnesota that his business acumen can transfer to the executive. Speaking with the New York Times in early December, Lindell stressed the importance of governing Minnesota as he would his business. “There’s no one else that can do as good a job as I know I can do, because I’ve had to build businesses, and it needs to be run like a business.”
