Minnesota House speaker ousts MyPillow CEO to win GOP governor nod

Mike Lindell running for governor of Minnesota was always going to be a sideshow, and now it's over before it really started. Lisa Demuth, the House speaker, muscled him out of the race, and by all accounts it wasn't close. That tells you something useful: Republican primary voters in Minnesota were never actually clamoring for a pillow salesman with an election-conspiracy podcast habit. They wanted someone who could win a general election against Tim Walz's successor-in-waiting, whoever that ends up being.

Lindell has spent five years being a lightning rod, and lightning rods don't win statehouses. He's a sympathetic figure to plenty of grassroots conservatives because of how hard he got hammered by the media and by Dominion's lawyers, but sympathy isn't a governing platform. Demuth, whatever you think of her, has actually run a legislative caucus and negotiated a budget in a divided state government. That's the resume Minnesota Republicans apparently decided they needed, not another culture-war martyr.

The Trump endorsement angle is the real story here. When the former president wades into a primary, the race stops being about who's the truest believer and starts being about who can actually take the seat. That's a healthy instinct for a party that's lost the last several statewide races in Minnesota by not-insignificant margins. Kendall Qualls is still in this, and he shouldn't be dismissed, but the lesson of this week is that Minnesota Republicans are tired of losing and are finally acting like it.