Klobuchar Launches Minnesota Governor Run

Sen. Amy Klobuchar formally launched her bid for governor of Minnesota, as the state remains a flashpoint for political violence amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

In a video released Thursday, the Minnesota Democrat named the multiple crises the state has weathered over the last year: The assassinations of the state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband; a school shooting; the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti; and the “3,000 ICE agents on our streets and in our towns, sent by an administration that relishes division,” she said.

“We cannot sugarcoat how hard this is,” Klobuchar said. “But in these moments of enormous difficulty, we find strength in our Minnesota values of hard work, freedom, and simple decency and good will.”

Klobuchar delayed her own campaign announcement, initially planned for Monday, after Border Patrol agents killed Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, over the weekend. Instead, Klobuchar spent that day speaking with White House officials, urging deescalation and pushing to get the administration to end its immigration crackdown in her state.

The Minnesota Democrat’s entrance into the gubernatorial race is expected to help lift Democrats’ chances of retaining the state. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz withdrew his reelection bid for a third term earlier this month, after a swirling fraud scandal threatened to engulf his campaign.

Though Minnesota leans blue, Republicans, at the time, felt newly energized about their chances to tie Walz to the scandal, though he has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But with Walz’s exit and Klobuchar’s entrance, Minnesota Democrats are confident she’ll shed that baggage.

The four-term senator nodded at the scandal in her announcement video. “I will make sure the people who steal taxpayer money go to jail and root out the fraud by changing the way state government works,” she said.

Klobuchar, a moderate senator, touted her bipartisan credentials from the Senate and pledged “to work with leaders from both parties in our state.” She asked “Democrats, Independents, and Republicans to join our campaign.”