Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) won the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Minnesota, setting her up to take on the yet-to-be-called Republican nominee in the November general election.
Klobuchar won the crowded primary by roughly 85 percentage points, receiving 89.1% of the vote, after the Associated Press called the race. Kobey Layne finished second, receiving 5.1% of the vote. Mohammad Wazwaz, Po Vang, Ole Savior, Thomas Evenstad, and Bill Gates Jr., who is unrelated to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, rounded out the Democratic candidates.
Klobuchar announced her candidacy in January after Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) said he would not run for a third term following federal scrutiny over his handling of fraud in the state’s welfare programs.
The fourth-term senator focused her campaign on anti-fraud efforts. Her campaign website lists rooting out fraud as one of her top priorities through conducting a “top-to-bottom” audit of state agencies and modernizing computer systems.
“I obviously am going to do things differently than Gov. Walz,” Klobuchar said in May. “We have different backgrounds. We’re going to have some different focuses.”
“I would have looked at, where are the programs where we’re starting to see ballooning budgets, which is something that should be done all the time,” she added. “When can we do these surprise audits and check on things immediately? Those are changes that I would make.”
Klobuchar also set herself up for success after securing an endorsement from the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Walz, however, did not weigh in on the race.
Despite distancing herself from her Democratic predecessor, Klobuchar faced attacks from Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who ran in the Republican primary, arguing that her leadership would be tantamount to giving Walz another term.
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“When you look at her voting record and who she supported, she is not good for Minnesota going forward,” Demuth said. “And so that is what is going to give us that opportunity to defeat her in November.”
Another Republican candidate, billionaire Kendall Qualls, has dubbed Klobuchar “Tim Walz 2.0.”