The Minnesota Republican Party made inroads two years ago with Somali voters and voters of color, but the prospect of retaining them look grim going into this year’s gubernatorial primary.
This comes despite the fact that the GOP-endorsed candidate, Kendall Qualls, and his high-profile challenger, Lisa Demuth, are both Black. No Republican candidate of color for Minnesota governor has ever won their primary; Qualls and Demuth are poised to potentially make history by breaking that streak.
But polls show that state Rep. Demuth, speaker of the Minnesota House, and Qualls, an army veteran and former health care executive, are lagging behind MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
While Qualls secured the state GOP endorsement at the party convention in May, Lindell secured the arguably bigger endorsement two weeks ago from President Donald Trump. That endorsement propelled Lindell to frontrunner status in a recent KSTP-TV poll that found him leading Demuth by 9 percentage points and Qualls by more than 25 percentage points.
All three face off in the Aug. 11 primary election. The winner will likely move onto the Nov. 3 general election against the Democratic nominee, who is widely expected to be U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
Anti-Somali rhetoric from Trump and the fallout from Operation Metro Surge, which saw widespread racial profiling from federal immigration agents, excessive use of force and the fatal shootings of two Minneapolis residents, among other issues, jeopardized all the gains the party made with voters of color during the last election cycle, said Salman Fiqy, who helped court Somali voters for the Republican Party two years ago.
“With this climate, I don’t see them having any chance, especially after the ICE invasion,” Fiqy said of Demuth, Qualls and Lindell. “I think that actually cemented the allegation that was always used that Republicans don’t care about people of color.”
Fiqy and other Somali voters stood directly behind Trump in a 2024 rally in St. Cloud holding signs that read, “Somalis for Trump.” Fiqy campaigned in the community and helped lead a Somalis for Trump press conference at the State Capitol shortly before the general election.
But Fiqy publicly cut ties with the Republican Party following Trump’s remarks last year calling Somalis “garbage.” He is still politically conservative, but is planning on sitting out the primary.
Fiqy’s story isn’t uncommon. Mohamed Amin, who has been active with the local Republican Party for 25 years, acknowledged that Operation Metro Surge and Trump’s rhetoric scared off Somalis who voted for Trump in the last election.
“I hate to say it as a Republican, but the majority have self-deported to the Democrat Party,” Amin told Sahan Journal.
Republicans in the local Black community, however, contend that their conservative support is growing, though far from a majority.
“Younger Black voters are being more reflective, more analytical, and saying, ‘We’ve gone down the Democratic road for decades, and now it’s time to reassess whether this is doing me personally any good, or the community any good,’” said Brian Walker, a longtime Minnesota Republican voter who does anti-abortion advocacy work.
But Republican candidates who want to win Minnesota need to campaign in Black and urban neighborhoods, Walker stressed.
“That depends on if they’re willing to come,” Walker told Sahan Journal.
Demuth and Qualls face obstacles
Both Demuth and Qualls, whose campaigns did not return messages and phone calls seeking comment for this story, face hurdles to winning the primary next month.
Demuth made history last year by becoming the first Black speaker for the Minnesota House of Representatives. She is running on a platform of lowering state income taxes, repealing the state’s ban on nuclear energy and spending more on public safety.
Demuth, who represents Cold Spring and its surrounding area, has served in the legislature for seven years. In 2022, Republicans elected her as minority leader of the House, and she became the first Black lawmaker to hold that position. Three years later, as Republicans and Democrats tied control of the House, Demuth became speaker in an agreement with then-DFL House leader Melissa Hortman.
During the 2025 session, Demuth negotiated with the DFL-controlled Senate and Governor’s Office to end MinnesotaCare health coverage for undocumented immigrants.
Qualls worked in health care marketing and consulting, and founded a nonprofit organization called TakeCharge, which is opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. His organization has produced two movies, a magazine and launched a kindergarten- through second-grade private school run by Qualls’ wife, Sheila Qualls.
Qualls ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022 and U.S. Congress in 2020.
Qualls’ campaign platform is similar to Demuth’s, but focuses more on cultural issues like banning transgender people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity, and supporting a “parental bill of rights” that would give parents more control over what their children learn in public schools.
Demuth and Qualls lack the name recognition of Lindell, who is known from his MyPillow infomercials and his frequent national rightwing media appearances since 2020, said Michael Minta, who chairs the political science department at the University of Minnesota.
Following the 2020 presidential election, Lindell became one of the leading voices in the country falsely claiming that the election was rigged. It led to two defamation lawsuits against Lindell from Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems. Lindell lost both lawsuits, and in the Dominion case was ordered to pay the company $2.3 million in damages.
However, Dominion, which is now called Liberty Vote following its acquisition by a former Colorado Republican Party election official, dismissed the defamation case against Lindell last month. The Smartmatic case against Lindell is ongoing.
If anything, Lindell said, the Minnesota GOP is prejudiced against his campaign because of baggage from his relationship with Trump.
“I was the one that the GOP was going after and suppressing me,” Lindell told Sahan Journal. “I didn’t get to go to the debates and I didn’t get to go to the forums that those guys got to go to.”
“I’m leading in the polls because people know me. I have the name recognition,” he said, citing the success of his pillow business. “They know that I’ve spent all my life here in Minnesota, and that I’ve built a business employing thousands of people.”
Lindell called the targeting of Somali residents during Operation Metro Surge “a false narrative,” despite Trump’s rhetoric against Somali Minnesotans serving as the catalyst for the months-long operation.
For the party-endorsed candidate, Qualls is lacking money, which will present a challenge, Minta said. Both Qualls and Demuth have spent more than $200,000 on their campaigns for the year so far, according to their most recent campaign finance reports.
Qualls had just $34,000 on hand in June. Demuth, by contrast, had $517,000. Lindell had $11,000 after spending $717,000 on his campaign.
None of this compares to Klobuchar’s campaign, which as of June had raised $6.9 million and had $3.9 million on hand.
Though she lost the party endorsement, Demuth is something of an institutional candidate because of her experience in the Legislature, said University of St. Thomas political science professor Tim Lynch. That could hurt her in the primary, he said, because in recent years, many Republican voters have favored candidates who promote themselves as anti-establishment.
“Lindell stands out in that he doesn’t have the formal party backing or the longstanding presence within the establishment of the Republican Party,” Lynch said.
That outsider status was underscored when the chair of the Minnesota Republican Party publicly attacked Lindell following Trump’s endorsement.
In a prepared statement distributed to media outlets following Trump’s nod to Lindell, Minnesota Republican Party Chair Alex Plechash criticized Lindell for “[leaving] Minnesota for Texas and his “serious financial baggage” including “tens of thousands of dollars in delinquent property taxes.”
“Minnesota cannot afford to nominate a ticket that gives Democrats an easy target and creates a very real possibility of a DFL trifecta,” Plechash wrote.
Demuth and Qualls’ race could motivate Republicans of color to turn out and vote in the primary, Minta said, but Republicans of color are a small base in the state’s electorate.
“If anything, they might split their vote,” said Minta, who specializes in studying African American and Latino representation in politics.
Asked whether race may be playing a role in his success in the polls against Demuth and Qualls, Lindell called that theory “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” and said he wasn’t aware Demuth is Black.
Minta said white voters are less likely to turn out when the top candidates of their party preference are Black. Minta cited a 2015 study by Syracuse University and Stony Brook University that found that President Barack Obama’s presence in the 2008 presidential election coincided with lower turnout among white voters, and prompted some white voters to cast their ballot for the Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Minta said this phenomenon played out in the 2022 Minnesota election where Attorney General Keith Ellison, who is Black and Muslim, earned a much smaller share of the total Democratic voter turnout compared to Gov. Tim Walz.
That year, Ellison faced private attorney and political newcomer Jim Schultz and beat him by less than 1 percentage point for reelection. Walz, on the other hand, cruised to reelection that same year by beating former state Rep. Scott Jensen by nearly 8 percentage points.
“Some will say [Ellison] faced a well-funded challenger, his role in the George Floyd case, and the pandemic were the reasons he underperformed relative to other Democrats, but shouldn’t these factors impact all Democrats and not just Ellison?” Minta said.
If Demuth or Qualls win the primary and make it to the general election, it’s unlikely to motivate Black voters, who overall lean Democratic, Lynch said.
“In today’s climate, people vote for the candidate of the party they affiliate with at very high rates,” Lynch said. “It’s hard to move anything beyond that.”
Amin added that a candidate’s race will not motivate Republicans at the polls.
“I would say their race has nothing to do with it — their ideas do,” Amin said. “If you look at the base, the majority is white.”
Amin, who is known for his “Average Mohamed” cartoon webseries against Islamic extremism, is not publicly sharing his preferred gubernatorial candidate, but plans to campaign for whoever wins the GOP primary. He called all three “strong candidates.”
‘No silver lining on the horizon’
Lucky Rosenbloom, a resident of St. Paul’s historically Black Rondo neighborhood who many years ago chaired the now-defunct Minnesota Black Republican Coalition, said Democrats have controlled the Minneapolis and St. Paul city councils, mayor’s offices, school boards and county commissions, and that the Black community hasn’t gotten much out of it.
“Abortions killing Black babies, the crime, the rundown apartments — Democrats are in control and young people are seeing this,” Rosenbloom said.
Rosenbloom said he hasn’t seen Demuth or Qualls campaigning in urban neighborhoods where Republicans of color live.
“They should be over in north Minneapolis, they should be in Rondo, organizing the same way they are organizing in other communities,” Rosenbloom said. “Not to do so is serious neglect of urban Republicans that live in the area who want to support them and go through hell every day just to say they’re Republicans.”
Fiqy added that Minnesota Republicans must distance themselves from Trump, who is politically unpopular in the state, in order to win a statewide race.
Before Fiqy left the Republican Party, he said he and others encouraged local Republican Party operatives and prominent Republican politicians to distance themselves from Trump’s comments against Somalis.
“We reached out to Tom Emmer,” Fiqy said. “His office said, ‘This idea [Trump’s opinions on Somalis] is gaining traction among Minnesota GOP voters. We can’t take a stance against this, in fact, we’re even going to pour oil on the fire.’”
Fiqy recalled the office’s response from memory; it’s unclear exactly what words were used. Emmer’s office did not return phone calls and messages seeking comment for this story.
Fiqy said the response from Emmer’s office and a similar refusal from the state Republican Party “gave me closure” to leave the party. After he left, some Republican operatives encouraged him to stay with the party and help with the 2026 election. He refused.
“There’s no silver lining on the horizon,” he said. “I cannot be a part of this.”
The state Republican Party did not return phone calls and messages seeking comment for this story.
