Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota who ran for vice-president in 2024, announced on Monday that he is abandoning his quest for a third term in office.
The move comes after ongoing fraud of social services cases caught the attention of US Republicans, including Donald Trump, who then used the cases as a pretext to go after Somali residents.
Walz said in a statement that he wasn’t able to “give a political campaign my all”.
“Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences,” Walz said. “So I’ve decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work.”
According to reports in several media outlets, Walz spoke with Amy Klobuchar, a US senator, over the weekend about the possibility of her running for governor instead. She has served as a US senator for Minnesota since 2007 and regularly wins her statewide re-election bids handily.
Walz had announced in September that he would seek a third term as governor – an unprecedented move for the Minnesota governorship, which he has held since 2018. Before that, he served in Congress representing southern Minnesota for six terms after flipping a Republican seat.
A poll last summer conducted by the Minnesota Star Tribune and Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication ahead of Walz announcing his bid for a third term found that about half of Minnesotans didn’t think he should run again.
His campaign for vice-president on the ticket with Kamala Harris raised his profile significantly across the country. Along with legislative leaders, he used a government trifecta in 2023 to deliver a host of progressive reforms that caught the attention of the left.
This increased profile has also made him a target on the right. In recent weeks, Trump has gone after Minnesota and Walz, directing a surge of immigration enforcement agents to the state, where they have pulled over US citizens and apprehended hundreds, despite consistent pushback from local residents. Over the weekend, Trump shared a conspiracy theory about the killings of Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark – close friends of Walz – attempting to tie Walz to the killings.
The fraud cases – which included organized theft of meals for children, services for kids with autism and housing programs – have served as a major liability for Walz during his re-election and more fodder for the right to attack him and the state. Last month, a rightwing YouTuber attempted to enter multiple daycare centers and alleged they weren’t taking care of kids, which prompted the US government to freeze federal funding for childcare for the state.
In his announcement on Monday, Walz said the state had made progress in fighting the fraud and that people are right to be concerned about fraud in government, but there was now “an organized group of political actors seeking to take advantage of the crisis”.
“I won’t mince words here,” Walz said. “Donald Trump and his allies – in Washington, in St Paul, and online – want to make our state a colder, meaner place. They want to poison our people against each other by attacking our neighbors. And, ultimately, they want to take away much of what makes Minnesota the best place in America to raise a family. They’ve already begun by taking our tax dollars that were meant to help families afford child care. And they have no intention of stopping there.”
He said that the “buck stops with me” with fighting and preventing fraud and that Republicans’ “political gamesmanship” makes it harder to fight fraud.
“I cannot abide the actions of the political leadership in Washington – these opportunists who are willing to hurt our people to score a few cheap points,” he said. “They and their allies have no intention of helping us solve the problem – and every intention of profiting off of it.”
He said he believes if he gave his re-election bid his all, he would succeed in winning a third term. But he concluded he couldn’t give it his all, and he would instead focus on the work of his office instead of a run for re-election. He said he made the decision with “zero sadness and zero regret” and was confident that a Democrat would continue to hold the governorship in November.
“Most of all, I want Minnesotans to know that I’m on the job, 24/7, focused on making sure we stay America’s best place to live and raise kids. No one will take that away from us. Not the fraudsters. And not the president. Not on my watch.”
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