Governor's Race Explainer: Klobuchar vs. Demuth for an Open Seat
With Governor Tim Walz retiring, Minnesota voters will choose between Amy Klobuchar and Lisa Demuth in an open race that will shape the state for four years.
Minnesota's race for governor is an open-seat contest this year, the kind that resets a state's politics. With Governor Tim Walz retiring, voters will choose between Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, and Lisa Demuth, a Republican, to lead a state government that touches everything from schools and health care to roads, taxes and the state workforce.
Open seats differ from reelection campaigns in an important way: there is no incumbent record in the office itself to reward or punish. Voters instead weigh the candidates' prior public service, their stated priorities, their campaigns and their competing accounts of what Minnesota's next four years require. Turnout in the Twin Cities metro, the suburbs and greater Minnesota will all shape the result, which is why both campaigns have treated the race as a statewide organizing effort rather than a single-region contest.
For Saint Paul, the stakes are direct. The governor works in the Capitol a short walk from downtown, appoints the commissioners who run state agencies headquartered in the city, and signs or vetoes the bonding and budget bills that determine state investment in the capital city and across Minnesota. State employees are neighbors here, and state policy is local news in a capital city in a way it is nowhere else.
Before voting, residents can review candidate information through official voter resources and their sample ballot at mnvotes.gov, and compare how each campaign addresses the issues they care about most. Whatever the outcome Tuesday night, or in the days that follow if counting takes time, Minnesota will have a new governor-elect preparing a transition, and Saint Paul will be the place where that work begins.
