By Michelle Griffith | Reporter
Good morning, Reformers.
Patrick sends along a correction from yesterday: state Sen. Paul Utke was defeated in his GOP primary. A county data entry error, later corrected, led to an erroneous result on the secretary of state’s website Tuesday night.
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Republican Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth hit the radio airwaves yesterday with their first post-primary election interviews. The pair will be at the top of the ticket in November as the nominees for Minnesota governor.
Klobuchar reiterated that she wants to be a transformative governor who rejects the status quo, despite seeking the office held by Democrats for nearly 16 years. She highlighted her plans to perform a top-to-bottom audit of state government on day one; work with the private sector to get 100,000 new homes built in Minnesota; and make healthcare more affordable.
WCCO radio host Vineeta Sawkar asked Klobuchar about Demuth’s attempts to tie her to the fraud crisis and asked what she did about it. Klobuchar, who was in D.C. and not in charge of the state agencies where most of the fraud occurred, said she worked to provide more resources to the U.S. attorney, who then charged over 70 people in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme.
“They hired the prosecutors, they brought the cases, and so my job now as your governor will be to finish this job and make sure this never happens again,” Klobuchar said.
Demuth continued to tie Klobuchar to the fraud. She argued that Klobuchar supported Gov. Tim Walz even after news of the fraud crisis broke.
(For some background, read the Reformer analysis of the explosion in spending in the 14 high-risk Medicaid programs.)
Demuth said as governor she will work to root out fraud, lower taxes and improve student test scores. The House speaker so far has only released a fraud prevention plan, which includes appointing her lieutenant governor as a fraud czar; freezing payments to businesses suspected of fraud, which the Department of Human Services is already doing; and, according to her website, passing a bill to create an independent office of inspector general — which is already law after the Legislature passed it this year.
“Minnesotans are fed up with fraud. My Democrat colleagues don't want to talk about that when they're out door-knocking,” Demuth told WCCO Radio’s Jason DeRusha. “Minnesotans are not going to let that go away, and they want to know that their tax dollars are protected, that they can afford their lives, and that Minnesota both has hope and the chance at a comeback.”
Sawkar also asked Klobuchar about the Democratic Party’s recent support for progressive candidates and whether there was no longer room in the party for moderate voters.
“I am a moderate voice, and I think you can have a party with different voices and different views,” Klobuchar said. “As your governor, we will not move our state to the left or move our state to the right. We will move our state forward.”
Onto today’s Reformer.
Voters cast their ballots at Webster Town Hall in Webster, Minnesota during the primary election Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
By Madison McVan
Most of the sitting Minnesota lawmakers who faced intra-party challengers won their primary elections Tuesday.
Only one incumbent lawmaker was unseated: Sen. Paul Utke, R-Park Rapids, who lost by fewer than 200 votes to Rep. Mike Wiener, who had earned the Republican endorsement in the race.
By Michelle Griffith
Over 1.1 million Minnesotans voted in Tuesday’s primary election, or a quarter of eligible voters, setting the record for most votes cast in a primary, Secretary of State Steve Simon announced Wednesday.
Primary election participation is lower than November general elections, where Minnesota has sometimes reached turnout as high as 80% in presidential years and 60% in non-presidential years.
By Mike Norton
The former Minneapolis DFL vice chair argues that Klobuchar should tell Minnesotans who she plans to appoint to her U.S. Senate seat if she wins the race for governor in November.
“If Klobuchar is elected, the Senate appointment will likely be her first significant act as governor. Her choice to fill her Senate seat could be there for decades to come and have a much greater impact on the lives of Minnesotans than, say, Klobuchar’s lieutenant governor,” Norton writes.
Klobuchar isn’t eager to take up Norton’s plea for transparency on this issue, however: Vineeta Sawkar asked Klobuchar about this yesterday, and Klobuchar said she’s focused on her campaign right now and “the next day after the election, let’s talk about that.”
IN OTHER NEWS
OH BY THE WAY
I enjoy watching documentaries in my free time, and I would love to hear your recommendations.
I recently watched the 2011 documentary, “There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane,” which is about a family trying to understand what happened in a 2009 car crash that killed eight people. The evidence strongly suggests that the driver, aunt Diane, was intoxicated, but her family doesn’t believe it and goes the extra mile to prove that something else happened.
Let me know your favorite documentaries! I need something new to watch.
Correspond: [email protected]
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