Walz’s stunning exit from the 2026 governor’s race came less than four months after he announced he would seek reelection, and as Minnesota is confronting one of the largest social services fraud scandals in its history.
Republicans had called for Walz to resign or drop his reelection bid in response to the sprawling fraud crisis, and a growing number of Democrats had privately expressed concerns about Walz’s viability for a third term. The chatter within the DFL about Walz had become even louder since President Donald Trump’s administration cast a spotlight on the fraud.
Walz made his announcement during a news conference at the State Capitol on Jan. 5. He read from prepared remarks and then abruptly ended the news conference after eight minutes, without taking any questions from a crowd of media who gathered to cover the announcement.
“In September, I announced that I would seek a historic third term as Minnesota’s governor. And I have every confidence that if I gave it my all, we would win that race,” Walz said in his brief remarks. “But as I reflect on this moment with my family and my team over the holidays, I came to the conclusion that I can’t give a political campaign my all.”
Walz’s departure from the race marks a stunning crash for his once-ascendant political career.
The DFL governor was on top of the political world after he signed a liberal policy bonanza into law in 2023 and rose to the national stage the following year as his party’s vice presidential nominee. But 2025 brought immense challenges for Walz as he recovered from his national defeat, mourned the loss of his close colleague who was killed in a political assassination and found himself under the harsh national spotlight for the state’s fraud crisis.
Walz said he wants to spend the rest of his time in office tackling the issue of fraud instead of “defending my own political interest.”
Federal prosecutors have documented hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of fraud in state autism services, housing and meals programs, among others. The total scope of the theft could reach into the billions when all is uncovered, according to federal prosecutors.
“Minnesota faces enormous challenges this year and I refuse to spend a single minute doing anything other than rising to meet this moment,” he said.
Walz’s decision will set off a scramble to find a new candidate to replace him at the top of the ticket. Party insiders widely believe U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Secretary of State Steve Simon or Attorney General Keith Ellison could jump into the governor’s race on the DFL side.
The governor met with Klobuchar on Sunday, according to people familiar with the meeting. A person close to Klobuchar said she is being encouraged to run for governor and is seriously considering it.
A person close to Simon’s campaign says he will not run for governor if Klobuchar enters the race.
Nearly a dozen Democrats who spoke to the Minnesota Star Tribune in recent weeks said they thought Walz should not seek reelection, including several who compared his run for a third term to President Joe Biden’s doomed 2024 reelection campaign.
A group of DFL state senators had been requesting a meeting with Walz in the past couple weeks to voice their concerns to him directly and start a private discussion about the path forward, according to multiple people familiar with the effort.
Minnesota House DFL Leader Zack Stephenson said Monday that Walz made a “really difficult and remarkable decision” in choosing to drop his bid for reelection. Other DFLers echoed that praise in statements that were strikingly similar to how Democrats responded when Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 race.
“I think that this is another proof point of where the governor is putting the well-being of Minnesota ahead of politics,” Stephenson said. He added that the “monster challenge” of addressing fraud in state programs is “deserving of the full-time attention of the chief executive of the state of Minnesota.”
“He’s making the right decision as governor,” Stephenson said.
Walz’s decision also reverberated through the field of about a dozen GOP candidates who are running for governor. State House Speaker Lisa Demuth told the Minnesota Star Tribune she wasn’t shocked by the move considering the pressure Walz was facing.
She said any Democrat who runs for governor will have to contend with headwinds Walz may have faced.
“The Democrats have never separated themselves from Walz whatsoever,” she said, “so really, whichever Democrat ends up running for governor is going to be running for Gov. Walz’s third term.”
Demuth said the possible entry of Klobuchar into the race for governor doesn’t change her campaign calculus. As a federal elected official, Klobuchar has not had responsibility over the administration of state programs.
In addition to Demuth, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, businessman Kendall Qualls, Minneapolis attorney Chris Madel and 2022 nominee Scott Jensen are also running for governor on the GOP side.
While Republicans have pushed to make the 2026 governor’s race about fraud, Walz had positioned himself as a chief opponent to Trump in his bid for reelection. Whoever fills Walz’s spot on the ticket will almost certainly try to make the midterm election a referendum on Trump and the GOP broadly.
Walz has been defiant against Trump amid the crackdown on fraud, arguing the president is turning it into a political issue. The governor has taken recent steps to address Minnesota’s fraud crisis, including hiring a new point man to head up the state’s response.
On Saturday, Jan. 3, the governor also criticized Trump for spreading a baseless conspiracy theory suggesting Walz was involved in the killing of former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in June.
Before he announced his run for reelection, Walz had wavered over whether to seek another term in the office. He privately questioned if he wanted to serve for 12 consecutive years, nearly a dozen people in the party told the Star Tribune earlier this year. Walz also had been knocked off course by the June 14 assassination of Hortman, his close friend and governing partner in the Minnesota House.
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