Amy Klobuchar won the Democratic primary for Minnesota governor with 89.1% of the vote, beating six other candidates and moving the open race toward November. Lisa Demuth was not on the ballot, but Klobuchar’s result now sharpens the broader fight for control of the governor’s office.
The win matters because Minnesota has an open governor’s race for the first time since 2018, and Klobuchar entered in January after Tim Walz said he would not seek a third term. That gave her a head start in a contest that quickly turned into a test of whether a candidate with statewide name recognition could turn a late entry into a clean primary victory.
She did. Klobuchar, 66, had the party endorsement and Walz’s backing before voters went to the polls, and she converted that support into a commanding share of the vote. Her margin left little doubt about the result, even though she still had to clear six rivals rather than glide through a one-candidate runup.
The size of the win also says something about how Minnesota Democrats read the moment. Klobuchar has spent years building a statewide profile in the Senate, where she is in her fourth term and has risen to 14th in seniority. She was the first woman to represent Minnesota in the Senate, first won the seat in 2006 after serving as a Hennepin County prosecutor, and briefly mounted a presidential campaign in 2020. That record made her the obvious front-runner, but the primary still had to be won.
Ben Schierer was among the names folded into that race. In May, Klobuchar announced the former Fergus Falls mayor as her running mate, saying he had run two small businesses and knew how to get results by bringing people together. Schierer would become lieutenant governor if the pair wins in November, giving the campaign a second face as it heads into the fall.
The unanswered piece is simpler now than it was before the vote: who the Republican nominee will be and how quickly that side of the ballot settles. Klobuchar is through to November, and the contest now shifts from an intra-party test to a two-party race that will decide whether Minnesota keeps an open governor’s office in Democratic hands.
