Lisa Demuth, a Minnesota Republican currently serving as the state House speaker, was leading in the GOP gubernatorial primary according to the state party’s latest straw poll.
Demuth pulled ahead with more than 5,000 votes in the gubernatorial straw poll during Tuesday night’s precinct caucuses, according to the latest results released by the Republican Party of Minnesota as of Wednesday morning. Four-fifths of the results were tallied by that point.
In second place was former GOP gubernatorial candidate Kendall Qualls with over 4,000 votes, per the poll. He notably won a straw poll released by the party’s State Central Committee in December. Qualls last ran for Minnesota governor in 2022, but failed to secure the GOP nomination.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was in third place with more than 2,700 votes, the poll showed. Nearly 10 other candidates remained far behind the three frontrunners.
The results are especially encouraging for Demuth as she seeks the party’s nomination. “In just three months since I announced my campaign for governor, our team has focused our efforts on organizing and empowering Minnesotans who are looking for a strong conservative and proven leader to get our state back on track after two disastrous terms of Tim Walz,” Demuth said. “We know Amy Klobuchar would give us nothing more than a rubber stamp Walz third term.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) announced last week she is running to succeed Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), who bowed out of the race in early January. The governor is facing increasing scrutiny from the Trump administration over the alleged social services fraud that has plagued his state since late November.
Before Klobuchar launched her campaign, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) announced he would be seeking reelection instead of running for governor.
Responding to the latest straw poll showing Demuth’s lead, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party knocked the state representative for associating herself with President Donald Trump.
“Lisa Demuth has fully embraced the most destructive Trump policies, from the tariffs that have devastated Minnesota’s working families to Operation Metro Surge,” DFL Party Chairman Richard Carlbom said in a statement on Wednesday, referring to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the state.
“As Trump unleashed his retribution campaign on Minnesota, Demuth defended Donald Trump instead of her state and blamed local law enforcement for the crisis,” he added. “She has continued to chase Trump’s endorsement — even as his agenda increases prices and explodes health care costs for Minnesotans. Lisa Demuth has chosen Trump over our state, and Minnesotans won’t forget it.”
Demuth previously said she would welcome Trump’s endorsement, but that appears to lie with Lindell.
During a North Carolina rally in December, Trump said Lindell “deserves to be governor of Minnesota” while relating his own legal troubles to those of his ally.
“That man suffered. What he did, what he went through, because he knew the election was rigged. And he did it. I mean, he just did it as a citizen,” Trump told his supporters. “These people went after him; they went after his company. They did that with me, too, but at least I knew what I was getting into. He was just a guy that said, ‘Jeez, this election was so crooked, it was so rigged.’ He fought like hell.”
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Lindell very publicly challenged the results of the 2020 presidential election. As a result, he faced defamation lawsuits by electronic voting companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. In the Dominion case, Lindell was ordered to pay a former employee of the company roughly $2.3 million in defamation damages last year.
Minnesota’s primary elections are scheduled for Aug. 11, leaving plenty of time for Demuth’s spot in the race to change.
