Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic US senator and one-time presidential candidate, announced she will run for governor of Minnesota, an expected move after the incumbent governor, Tim Walz, dropped out of the race in early January.
Klobuchar’s announcement comes less than 24 hours after Walz said that he would never run for public office again.
“Minnesota, we’ve been through a lot,” Klobuchar said in a video posted on X on Thursday morning, calling out political violence across the state, including the recent killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents dispatched to the area by Donald Trump.
She continued: “We cannot sugar coat how hard this is, but in these moments of enormous difficulty, we find strength in our Minnesota values of hard work, freedom and simple decency and good will. These times call for leaders who can stand up and not be rubber stamps of this administration.”
She also emphasized: “I’m running for every one … for every Minnesotan who wants ICE and its abusive tactics out of the state we love.”
Klobuchar’s four-minute video announcement went on to lay out three principles that would guide her work, including a pledge to “stand up for what’s right and fix what’s wrong”.
In this nod towards the state’s public fraud scandal, which has served as the pretext for Trump’s immigration enforcement operations, Klobuchar said that she would make sure “the people who steal taxpayer money go to jail and root out the fraud”.
Federal prosecutors have estimated as much as $9bn has been stolen across schemes exploiting federal relief programs, including programs for food aid during the Covid pandemic.
Walz had already decided not to seek a third term as governor after clashing with the Trump administration’s decision to dispatch federal agents allegedly seeking to remove “vicious” criminals linked to the public programs fraud scandal. He told reporters in a 5 January announcement that “I don’t think any governor in history has had to fight a war against the federal government every single day.”
Speaking to MS Now on Wednesday night, Walz acknowledged that ordinary citizens had played a leading role in the state efforts to resist ICE. Thousands have joined efforts to expel federal agents from Minneapolis.
“There’s heroes on the streets and we don’t know their names,” Walz said. “And those grass-top leaders brought this administration to their knees this week to do something about it.”
The Democratic governor previously had campaigned to be vice-president to Kamala Harris during her 2024 race against President Trump. Walz did not say what he planned to do next, but told MS Now: “There are other ways to serve, and I’ll find them.”
Klobuchar, 65, filed initial paperwork on 22 January, setting up a run for the governorship. Walz reportedly talked to Klobuchar about her running before he announced he would not continue his bid for a third term.
Klobuchar has won handily each time she has run for the US Senate, most recently in 2024, when she won by more than 15 points.
She has served in the Senate since 2007 and before that served two terms as the Hennepin county attorney. She ran in the Democratic primary for president in 2020 before dropping out and endorsing Joe Biden.
The fraud cases – which include misuse of funds for meal programs for students, Medicaid and autism services – will probably be a focus of the governor’s race. There’s a crowded field of candidates on the right, including the state House speaker, rightwing influencers and pillow salesman Mike Lindell.
