Mike Lindell, the My Pillow Guy election conspiracist, loses GOP endorsement in Minnesota governor’s race

By Brentin Mock

OXON HILL, MARYLAND - FEBRUARY 21: CEO of My Pillow Mike Lindell speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on February 21, 2025 in Oxon Hill, Maryland. The annual four-day gathering brings together conservative U.S. lawmakers, international leaders, media personalities and businessmen to discuss and champion conservative ideas. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

Mike Lindell, the My Pillow Guy who’s long worked feverishly to throw the 2020 election to Donald Trump, may be out of the running for the GOP nomination in the Minnesota governor’s race. 

At the Republican Party’s state convention this weekend, where members cast ballots for the party’s official endorsements, Lindell came in third place among gubernatorial candidates, which removed him from eligibility for the endorsement. 

This means that Lindell – a politician notorious for conspiring with Trump to stir 2020 election conspiracies – won’t be on the ticket as the state’s GOP-picked runner. He can continue campaigning to win the August primary, but it will be without the full support of the Minnesota Republican Party.

Speaking at the convention, where he was reportedly booed, Lindell said that he intended to continue his run without the endorsement. 

In December, Trump said that Lindell “deserves to be governor” after the My Pillow CEO officially launched his campaign that month. Well before then Lindell had been known for peddling myths about how the 2020 election was rigged against Trump and how electronic voting machines were hacked to help Biden win. 

Last June, he was ordered to pay $2.3 million to Dominion Voting Systems for spreading libelous claims about how foreign countries used the company’s voting machines to overthrow the 2020 election. 

Still Lindell has continued pushing the falsehoods saying in an interview last July, “One of the things [Trump] and I are aligned perfectly on is he wants to get back to paper ballots, hand-counted, same day voting, precinct level, voter ID.”

He also helped finance a conspiracist group’s widely-panned audit of Maricopa County, Arizona’s 2020 results that ended up becoming the basis for the FBI’s probe into the county’s elections office earlier this year. 

He is also a close ally of Tina Peters, the imprisoned former Colorado election clerk whose nine-year sentence was recently commuted for her role in breaching the state’s voting system in a failed plot to reveal voter fraud. Lindell rallied heavily with Trump to free Peters since she was imprisoned in 2024.