Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and a leader of the election denial movement who was endorsed by President Trump for Minnesota governor this week, acknowledged that he is not registered to vote in the state he seeks to lead.
But Mr. Lindell, 65, said his biggest problem was not his registration status but that the Minnesota Republican Party had not supported his campaign, even after Mr. Trump publicly endorsed him.
“They are saying, ‘Mike Lindell can’t win,’” Mr. Lindell said in an interview on Saturday morning. He pointed to a statement from the Minnesota Republican Party that raised skepticism around Mr. Lindell’s electability.
“It’s disgusting,” he said. “They are trying to discredit the endorsement.”
In Minnesota, voters are allowed to register to vote on Election Day. Mr. Lindell, who is registered in Texas, said he was not concerned that he was not yet registered in his home state, something first reported by The Minnesota Star Tribune.
Mr. Lindell said he was registered to vote in Texas when he moved there for one year in 2024, soon after he married his current wife, Kendra. He said he returned to Minnesota, where he was born and raised, the following year, because he wanted to run for governor.
“Obviously I’m going to vote,” he said.
Since 2021, Mr. Lindell has tirelessly pushed, without evidence, claims that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” to prevent Mr. Trump from winning re-election.
He has been sued for defamation over his claims that voting machines were manipulated in 2020. Dominion Voting Systems, a manufacturer of voting machines, recently settled its lawsuit against Mr. Lindell, but last year, he was ordered to pay $2.3 million in damages to a former employee of Dominion after a federal jury found him guilty of defamation. A federal judge also found that Mr. Lindell defamed Smartmatic, another voting company, but has not specified how much he owed in damages.
The mounting legal fees have contributed to Mr. Lindell’s financial troubles. According to Hennepin County property records, Mr. Lindell owed $27,000 in unpaid taxes in 2025. He said on Saturday that he had recently paid off the debt, and that his financial situation was irrelevant to his campaign. The Times could not immediately verify if the property taxes had been paid.
Minnesota has not elected a Republican to statewide office in two decades, and Senator Amy Klobuchar is seen as the leading Democratic candidate to replace the state’s current governor, Tim Walz, who dropped out of the race last year. Mr. Lindell faces two main rivals in the Aug. 11 primary: Kendall Qualls, a businessman who was endorsed by the state Republican Party, and Lisa Demuth, the speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives.
Mr. Lindell said he was running because there was “rampant fraud” in Minnesota and it was becoming unaffordable to live there. “Minnesota needs a business person running this state,” he said. “We are going downhill in every category.”
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