Candidate Profile
Party: Republican
Age: 59
Previous Experience: Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives (2025-2026)
Campaign Goals: Fraud prevention, affordability, education and public safety
Lisa Demuth has never lost an election for public office. While the numbers are stacked high against her now, it is worth taking a closer look at the candidate with a track record for entering races as an underdog and emerging as a victor.
When a seat opened up on Demuth’s local school board in 2011, she launched her first political campaign. She ran as a write-in and won. She won two more times before deciding in 2018 to aim higher: the Minnesota House of Representatives, representing District 13A, which is about an hour northwest of Minneapolis.
Four years after winning that race, she successfully campaigned within the Republican caucus for House Minority Leader. Her predecessor, Kurt Daudt, later told the Star Tribune that given Demuth’s quiet, more reserved demeanor, he didn’t necessarily see her in that role.
A rapid rise to power
It was that role that put a spotlight on Demuth’s fundraising and candidate recruiting skills, and helped her steer the party to its 67-67 tie with the DFL in 2024. The resulting power-sharing agreement led to her ascension to the speakership.
Eleven months after she was sworn in as House Speaker, Demuth announced her candidacy for governor, running against the increasingly embattled Tim Walz.
Underestimated and unbeaten
Demuth had entered a crowded and growing primary field. She competed with headliners like former Army captain Kendall Qualls, who went on to win the Republican endorsement, and Trump loyalist Mike Lindell, who garnered the president’s endorsement. But in her brief time as House Speaker, Demuth solidified conservative bona fides of her own. She touted legislative achievements such as supporting the largest spending cut in state history, blocking proposed tax increases and taking free health insurance away from “illegal immigrant adults”.
In an early campaign video, Demuth went a step further, vowing to “never bow to the radical mob” and “to fight to make sure girls’ spaces are for girls, not men in dresses.”
But as Speaker, she had also demonstrated an ability to pass bipartisan legislation. This gave hope to some state Republicans that, in a head-to-head with Klobuchar, she could win over independents and other disenchanted Minnesota voters.
Those hopes appear to have been at least partially realized.
While Demuth’s 9-point deficit against Klobuchar may prove insurmountable, it is not the blow-out commanding lead that pundits initially anticipated when Klobuchar entered the picture. Just weeks after Klobuchar’s announcement, Cook Political Report described Demuth as the “heavy underdog” against Klobuchar’s well-oiled and road-tested political machinery.
Jacob Rubashkin, elections analyst and deputy editor of Inside Elections, sees the current polling numbers as a sign of Demuth’s political chops.
“If she were only getting the voters who supported Trump, the race would not look like it does. She’s already probably winning over an additional 10% of voters who don’t support the president,” Rubashkin said. “There are clearly people who are not happy with Trump, but are also unhappy with Walz and the Democratic leadership and they’re open to trying something different.”
A final push for the undecided
Now, with just three weeks to go, Demuth’s messaging, like Klobuchar’s, is aimed squarely at that 9% of undecided voters: the independents, the centrists, the fraud-fatigued and the fed-up. To win them over, Demuth is focused on four priorities: fraud prevention, affordability, education and public safety.
Demuth approaches all four through a distinctly conservative lens, emphasizing priorities such as cutting taxes, reducing social programs, eliminating woke standards and state mandates in public schools, increasing support of law enforcement and getting tougher on crime. But she also shares enough detail to provide at least a glimpse of where state budget dollars would go, and who might benefit most under a Demuth administration.
There are currently two gubernatorial debates scheduled. One, hosted by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce on Oct. 19, is invitation-only, with no broadcast plans announced. On Oct. 21, however, the candidates will participate in an hour-long debate at KTTC studios in Rochester. It will be televised live across every television market in the state.
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