After hearing news that MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has taken a lead in polls ahead of Tuesday’s Republican gubernatorial primary, a rural Minnesota Democrat told me with certainty, “Amy would smush him.” She was referring, of course, to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who has been endorsed by the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, faced no serious opposition after announcing her bid for governor and is expected to easily win the party’s nomination. Lindell, on the other hand, faces two formidable opponents: Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth and businessman Kendall Qualls, who’s been endorsed by the state GOP.
To that woman’s point, Klobuchar has won every statewide race she has entered by double-digit margins. Not surprisingly, Klobuchar isn’t commenting on Lindell’s rise in the polls. But when the DFL Facebook account posted news of Donald Trump’s endorsement, some who are among the party faithful couldn’t contain themselves. “I am thinking he doesn’t have a pillow’s chance in a snowball fight,” read one post. Another was more tempered: “I’m not going to curse this one by putting my inside thoughts outside.”
Klobuchar has won every statewide race she has entered by double-digit margins.
Any giddiness about candidate Lindell should be tempered by the possibility, however remote it might seem, of a Gov. Lindell. After all, Hillary Clinton’s campaign’s infamous “pied piper” strategy of focusing attention on her most extreme opponents in the 2016 presidential election helped launch one of the most improbable and destructive political careers in American history. And without the existence of that political career, far fewer people would know Lindell’s name.
He’d just be the University of Minnesota dropout hawking pillows on cable. His company, MyPillow, based in Chaska, Minnesota, is financially flailing in unpaid bills, legal judgments and dropped accounts. Trump lost Minnesota three times in a row, and much of Lindell’s trouble with his business can be linked to his support of Trump’s baseless claims that he won the 2020 election. (In court filings, Lindell has blamed the above problems on “lawfare.”)
Lindell was successfully sued for defamation for the false claims he made about a former Dominion Voting Systems employee related to the 2020 election. He failed in his attempt this year to have that verdict overturned.
Trump is no friend to Minnesota. Our state is a frequent target for his late-night social media rants. He targeted Minnesota in his 2026 State of the Union address, citing inflated numbers for fraud in the state that he has, in turn, used as a pretext for a racist and deadly ICE surge that galvanized Minnesotans to mount months of peaceful protests in support of immigrant communities.
Trump even insulted Minnesota in his endorsement of Lindell: “Mike truly loves Minnesota, as do I, and wants to bring it back from oblivion and embarrassment.” In return, Lindell praises the president at every opportunity. In a debate featuring Klobuchar and Lindell’s two primary opponents, he summed up what he believes is his advantage with four words: “I know a guy.”
Lindell added, “I have an advantage over everyone up here. I can call up and work with the president of the United States.” Even at this year’s Minnesota Farmfest, the agribusiness trade show that always attracts political candidates, Lindell didn’t wear the typical outfit of jeans and plaid. He showed up in a blue suit and red tie that looked like it had been picked out of Trump’s closet. Mimicking Trump and defending the tariffs that have been disastrous for farmers might get him through today’s primary election, but Democrats can’t imagine that pitch working in a general election and against the likes of Klobuchar. And that’s why some Democrats are champing at the bit for “Amy” to “smush” him.
I have an advantage over everyone up here. I can call up and work with the president of the United States.
MIKE LINDELL
Those making that wish seem to have forgotten, though, that Minnesota has been known to pick a wild card. In the 1998 gubernatorial election, Norm Coleman, the Republican mayor of St. Paul, and Hubert “Skip” Humphrey, the state attorney general and namesake of the former vice president, lost to professional wrestler Jesse Ventura.
Ventura is a vocal Trump opponent now, and he has endorsed Democratic candidates, but back then, he won on largely Republican ideas, including a pledge to not increase taxes. For his part, Lindell promises to end state income tax entirely, paid for with massive cuts to healthcare and education.
In addition to his fealty to Trump, there are other smaller reasons voters might choose to look askance at Lindell. In July, DFL state Senate candidate Dan Fiskum filed a complaint against Lindell alleging he violated state campaign laws by throwing his company’s pillows to parade crowds. Lindell called that complaint “complete nonsense.” He said, “We got everything completely OKed,” and that “We did everything right. There was no law broken, period.”
Later in July, state GOP chair Alex Plechash asked the Minnesota secretary of state to clarify residency requirements concerning the candidate. Lindell lived in Texas before returning home to Minnesota. The secretary of state’s office said it doesn’t handle residency challenges; the state’s supreme court does. Lindell presented August 2025 MyPillow pay stubs to Twin Cities news station KSTP that he says show he was living in Minnesota.
The man riding in downtown parades throwing pillows and trying to fend off lawsuits might seem a far cry from the former star of “The Apprentice” or from Ventura, the insurgent wrestling hero. But in Minnesota, the ascendancy of yet another attention-grabbing entertainer in this year’s political season is still reason to worry, not to celebrate.
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