Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth won the Republican primary for governor on Tuesday, August 11, defeating both Mike Lindell, the former MyPillow CEO endorsed by President Trump, and Kendall Qualls, the candidate endorsed by the state Republican Party at its convention. With most precincts reporting late Tuesday night, Demuth had more than 44 percent of the vote to Lindell’s 32 percent and Qualls’ 21 percent. Demuth, the first Black major-party nominee for governor in Minnesota history, will face Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, who won her primary the same night, in the November 3 general election. Elsewhere on Tuesday’s ballots: Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan won Minnesota’s open-seat Democratic Senate primary by roughly 20 points, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley won Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor by less than a percentage point in a race not decided until early Wednesday morning, and Connecticut Democrats ousted 14-term Congressman John Larson.
What Happened in the Minnesota Governor’s Race
The Republican primary presented Minnesota voters with an unusual three-way split: Trump endorsed Lindell on July 15, the state party’s convention delegates had endorsed Qualls, and Demuth — the sitting Speaker of the Minnesota House and the highest-ranking Republican officeholder in the state — carried neither endorsement. The most recent public polling before the primary, from KSTP/SurveyUSA, had shown Lindell leading Demuth by nine points after the Trump endorsement. The result reversed that picture entirely: Demuth beat Lindell by roughly 12 points. Lindell, who stepped down as CEO of MyPillow on August 4 to campaign full time, built his national profile as one of the most prominent promoters of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Minnesota Republican primary voters declined to make him their nominee for governor of a state no Republican presidential candidate has carried since 1972. Demuth’s win sets up a November contest against Klobuchar, the four-term senator who entered the governor’s race after Governor Tim Walz’s abrupt January withdrawal and won the Democratic-Farmer-Labor endorsement in May.
The Trump Endorsement Scoreboard
Lindell’s defeat was the most prominent loss yet for a Trump-endorsed candidate this cycle, but not the first. According to NBC News, seven Trump-backed candidates for Congress or statewide office have now lost primaries this season, five of them in statewide races. The endorsement record remains lopsidedly positive — Trump-backed candidates have won the large majority of contested primaries, and in May, Louisiana Republicans denied renomination to Senator Bill Cassidy after Trump backed his opponents. But the Minnesota result is a data point of a different kind: a Trump endorsee losing a Republican primary decisively, in a statewide race, to a candidate who had neither the president’s backing nor the party convention’s. The practical effect for November is that Minnesota Republicans nominated their strongest available general-election candidate anyway. Demuth enters the race against Klobuchar as an underdog, but a far more plausible one than Lindell would have been.
Minnesota’s Open Senate Seat: Flanagan Wins Big
Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan defeated Congresswoman Angie Craig by roughly 20 percentage points in the Democratic primary for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Senator Tina Smith, with 99 percent of ballots counted by Wednesday. Flanagan ran as the candidate of the party’s progressive wing against Craig, a four-term House member who had positioned herself toward the center and carried endorsements including Pete Buttigieg’s. Reporting through the spring, including from Axios, credited part of Flanagan’s momentum among party activists to backlash against federal immigration raids in the Twin Cities. Flanagan’s decisive win extends a pattern in this cycle’s Democratic Senate primaries: in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won the August 4 primary against a better-funded establishment favorite, and Flanagan’s margin was wider still. If elected in November, Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, would be among the first Native American women to serve in the United States Senate. She will face the winner of the Republican primary in November.
Wisconsin: Crowley Survives a Near-Tie
Wisconsin’s first open governor’s primary in 16 years produced the closest major result of the night. David Crowley, the Milwaukee County Executive who dropped out of the race in early July and re-entered a week later with Governor Tony Evers’ endorsement after Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez’s campaign collapsed, defeated state Representative Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, by less than a percentage point. The race was not called until early Wednesday morning; at one point in the count Hong led by roughly 300 votes out of more than 600,000 cast. The result is a counterpoint to the progressive-wing narrative from Minnesota and Michigan: Wisconsin Democrats chose the moderate over the democratic socialist, though by the narrowest of margins and with the sitting governor’s endorsement on the moderate’s side. Crowley, who would be Wisconsin’s first Black governor if elected, faces Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany in November in a state that decided the 2024 presidential election by less than a point.
Connecticut and Vermont
In Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District, Democratic voters ousted Congressman John Larson, 78, who has held the Hartford-area seat since 1999, in favor of Luke Bronin, 47, the former mayor of Hartford. Larson’s defeat makes him one of the few House incumbents to lose a primary this cycle and adds another data point to a running theme of this election season: Democratic primary voters replacing long-tenured older incumbents with younger challengers. In Vermont, economist Amanda Janoo won the Democratic primary for governor with 49.1 percent of the vote to Aly Richards’ 46.5 percent.
What It Means for November
Tuesday’s results set two of the country’s most watched November matchups: Klobuchar versus Demuth for Minnesota’s governorship, and Crowley versus Tiffany for Wisconsin’s. Minnesota’s open Senate seat — Flanagan versus the Republican nominee — is one Democrats must hold on their path to a Senate majority, which requires a net gain of four seats. And the night complicated two national narratives at once. Trump’s endorsement, at its most visible test of the summer, did not move Minnesota Republicans off the candidate they preferred. The Democratic progressive wing, ascendant in Michigan and in Minnesota’s Senate primary, fell just short in Wisconsin. The general election is November 3, 2026, twelve weeks from Tuesday’s primaries.