Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and one of the country’s most prolific spreaders of election disinformation, announced on Thursday that he was running for governor of Minnesota.
A close ally of President Trump, Mr. Lindell is best known for promoting the falsehood that voting machines in the United States are often rigged and have flipped elections.
With his polarizing politics, Mr. Lindell injects uncertainty into a crowded Republican field that includes Lisa Demuth, the speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives; Scott Jensen, a former state senator and the 2022 Republican nominee for governor; Chris Madel, a prominent lawyer in Minnesota; and State Representative Kristin Robbins.
They are competing for the chance to challenge Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat and his party’s vice-presidential nominee last year, who is running for a third term.
Mr. Lindell has been a key player in attempts to prove malfeasance with voting machines. He was an outspoken supporter of Tina Peters, a county clerk in Colorado who was convicted of tampering with voting machines in a failed attempt to show that they had been used to rig the 2020 election.
Mr. Lindell, a Minnesota native and businessman, endeared himself to Mr. Trump with his false claims of widespread fraud in the American electoral system. At a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year, Mr. Trump singled out Mr. Lindell from the stage. “That man suffered,” the president said of Mr. Lindell, adding that the “F.B.I. thugs” had gone after him.
“And he never changed his mind,” Mr. Trump said. “He said that election of 2020 was rigged.” Now, the president said, laughing, “It’s OK to say it, Mike.”
In March, a Trump administration official asked the Internal Revenue Service to follow up on concerns from Mr. Lindell that he had been “inappropriately targeted” with audits. The official wrote that “a high-profile friend of the President recently received an audit letter, from what I understand, his second in two years.”
Still, there have been limits to Mr. Trump’s support for Mr. Lindell. When the pillow executive ran for chair of the Republican National Committee in 2023, Mr. Trump did not endorse him and Mr. Lindell garnered only a few votes.
Mr. Lindell’s social media platform, LindellTV, has served as a megaphone for him. The platform has gained credentials to cover the White House and, more recently, the Pentagon.
At the same time, Mr. Lindell’s conspiratorial leanings have cost him financially. In June, a jury found that he had defamed Eric Coomer, a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems, and awarded $2.3 million in damages to the former employee, a verdict Mr. Lindell said he intended to appeal.
An ongoing lawsuit from Smartmatic, another voting machine company, is seeking “nine-figure damages” from Mr. Lindell and MyPillow, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
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