Minn.: GOP candidate drops out of race to replace Walz — ‘I don’t see a path for me to win’ oan

OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
9:43 AM – Friday, May 1, 2026

Minnesota state Representative Kristin Robbins, the Republican candidate running to replace Democrat Governor Tim Walz, has announced she will be ending her gubernatorial campaign.

“It was not a tough decision to get into the race 10 months ago,” Robbins (R-Minn.) told Fox News on Friday. “We could not allow Tim Walz to have a third term in Minnesota. He’s destroyed our state, and we had to stop him, and so, I think I made a great case for that, and because of all my work on the fraud committee he got out nine months ahead of schedule, which is great.”

Robbins, 58, is also the chair of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee.

She continued, referring to Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), “Once Senator Klobuchar became sort of the anointed candidate to replace him, I just think the establishment kind of circled the wagons and, you know, it became a challenging endeavor. And I’m a realist, and I am a numbers person, and when I look at the math, I don’t see a path for me to win.”

 

After Walz (D-Minn.) dropped his bid for a third term as governor amid a nationally scrutinized fraud scandal uncovered across his state, Klobuchar announced her own campaign, which was widely regarded as a “second-coming” of Walz. She quickly became the presumed nominee for the Democrat party due to her name recognition and political experience.

Robbins said she felt it was better to “bow out” and find a “new way to contribute” to her state after she realized that there are “many ways to serve.”

However, she has not decided what’s next other than finishing her current legislative session. She noted that “there’s a lot of big things going on in the front committee.”

“I know where the bodies are buried,” Robbins said about the rampant fraud in Minnesota.

Earlier this year, independent journalists investigated several businesses that claimed to provide social services — most notably, childcare. They found that these establishments, which receive funding from the government, did not seem to execute their missions. Childcare centers, for example, seemed to have no children on the premises.

The Minnesota gubernatorial race still includes Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, healthcare executive Kendall Qualls, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and several other Republicans.

Robbins said that she would “not be endorsing anyone.”

“That will be up to the voters to decide, and I wish all the other candidates well,” Robbins stated.

Looking back on her campaign, she said that “gratitude” was her “overwhelming thought.”

“I am so grateful for the last ten months of going all over the state meeting Minnesotans from every walk of life and to have had the privilege to run for governor and meet all these amazing people and hear their stories, be inspired by what they want for Minnesota,” she told Fox News. “I am just so grateful and so privileged.”

In a statement posted to social media on Friday, she wrote, “Our state government and political system are broken, and after fighting for Minnesotans from the inside for the past eight years, I have determined that the best way for me to fight for the future of our state is from the outside.”