Minnesota Picks a New Governor as the Walz Era Ends
Gov. Tim Walz chose not to seek a third term. Tuesday's contest between Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican Lisa Demuth decides who runs the state next — and fraud, cost and control of the Capitol run through it.
Minnesota is choosing a new governor on Tuesday for the first time in eight years, and it is doing so because the incumbent decided to stop. Gov. Tim Walz, first elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022, announced in September 2025 that he would run for a third term — Minnesota has no term limits — and then reversed himself in January, saying in a statement from his office that he would not seek re-election and would spend 2026 on the work of governing rather than campaigning. His term ends in January.
The race to succeed him pairs two figures who define their parties' Minnesota wings. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate is Amy Klobuchar, the four-term U.S. senator and former Hennepin County attorney who stepped into the race after Walz stepped out. The Republican candidate is Lisa Demuth of Cold Spring, the minority leader of the Minnesota House. Between them they offer the state's voters a clean choice of direction after eight years of DFL control of the governor's office.
The campaign's defining issue arrived before the candidates did: fraud in state-administered public programs. Federal prosecutions arising from the Feeding Our Future child-nutrition scandal and subsequent cases made program integrity the central argument of the race, with Republicans contending the Walz administration failed to stop theft on its watch and Democrats answering that prosecutions are proceeding and safeguards have been rebuilt. Klobuchar, a former prosecutor, has campaigned on tightening oversight; Demuth has argued the failures are systemic and require a change of party in the governor's office.
Below the governor's race, the whole Minnesota Legislature is on the ballot, along with the secretary of state, attorney general, state auditor, one of the state's two U.S. Senate seats and all eight U.S. House seats — a full reshaping of the state's political order in a single Tuesday. Control of the state House and Senate has been narrow in recent cycles, which means the governor's mansion and the legislature will be read together on election night.
Walz leaves office as one of the most consequential Minnesota governors of the modern era — a vice-presidential nominee whose tenure included a pandemic, a legislative trifecta and a fraud scandal that reshaped his final race by ending it. On Tuesday the state renders its verdict on what comes next. Polls close at 8 p.m.; if you are in line, you vote.
