Amy Klobuchar won the Minnesota governor primary with 89.1% of the vote, and Lisa Demuth now faces the next stage of a race that will go to the November general election. The result came after Klobuchar entered the contest in January and moved through a field that included six other candidates.
Minnesota governor primary election
Klobuchar’s margin came in a race she entered after Tim Walz said he would not seek a third term. She had the party endorsement and Walz’s backing, and the primary result leaves her positioned to face the winner of the Republican primary in November.
The vote also matters because Minnesota has an open governor’s race for the first time since 2018. That gives the primary result immediate weight: it settles the Democratic side of the ballot and turns the campaign toward the general-election matchup that still has one unresolved name.
Ben Schierer in May
In May, Klobuchar announced Ben Schierer as her running mate, saying, “I'm excited to announce my running mate for Lieutenant Governor: former Fergus Falls Mayor Ben Schierer.” She added, “Ben hasn’t just talked about how to create opportunities in greater Minnesota – he’s actually done it. He knows what it takes to run a small business – he’s run two of them. He knows what it takes to get results by bringing people together – because that’s what he did as mayor.”
Schierer would become lieutenant governor if Klobuchar wins in November. He is a former Fergus Falls mayor, and his role becomes relevant now because the ticket moves from a primary win to a general-election race.
Amy Klobuchar and the November
Klobuchar first ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006 after a career as a Hennepin County prosecutor. She is in her fourth Senate term, rose to 14th in Senate seniority, and serves as the third Democrat in Senate party leadership.
She also briefly ran a presidential campaign in 2020. Beyond that, she graduated from Wayzata High School, earned degrees from Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School, is married to John Bessler, and has one daughter, Abigail.
The unresolved piece is the Republican side of the ballot, which will determine who faces Klobuchar in the November general election. Until that matchup is set, the primary win answers only part of the question for Minnesota voters: the Democratic nominee is known, but the full November field is not.
