Mike Lindell in 2026: Governor Race, Recount Fight, Net Worth and Latest News

Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder and longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, spent 2026 trying to become the Republican nominee for governor of Minnesota. The story moved fast after the August primary: he lost, failed to secure a recount, and by mid-October was urging his supporters to back the candidate who beat him. He is no longer in the race, so anyone wondering whether he could still become governor can stop looking for that answer, and the sections below explain how it ended.

This guide brings together what is confirmed about the vote, the court fights, the questions about his residency, his finances and the lawsuits that followed him through the campaign. Many pages that rank for these searches are thin, copy one another or contradict themselves on basics such as wedding dates and net worth, so this article leans on court rulings, official statements and reporting from established Minnesota and national outlets, and it says clearly where a detail is not publicly confirmed.

Quick Facts

Did Mike Lindell Win His Primary? The Final Vote Count

No, Lindell finished second in the Republican primary for governor, and the Associated Press called the race for Demuth late on election night. The final totals showed Demuth with 179,546 votes, or about 43 percent, against 134,198 votes, or about 32 percent, for Lindell, a gap of more than 45,000 votes. Kendall Qualls, the third major contender and the candidate endorsed by the state Republican Party, congratulated Demuth shortly before the race was called.

The outcome surprised many observers because the latest public surveys before the vote had put Lindell ahead, and the president’s endorsement was expected to carry weight with primary voters. The AP described the result as a rare loss for a Trump-backed primary candidate. News analysis pointed to concerns among Minnesota Republicans that his long record of promoting false claims about the 2020 election would make it hard to win over independents and moderates in November, along with the residency questions covered later in this article, although no outlet has shown which factors mattered most.

How the Governor Race Took Shape

The campaign was announced with the idea of challenging Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, but the landscape changed when Walz dropped his re-election bid after a scandal over the widespread theft of state money meant for social-service programs. Sen. Amy Klobuchar became the Democratic nominee, and the general election is now framed as a contest between her and Demuth. On the Republican side, Lindell lost the contest for the state party’s endorsement, and party leaders publicly questioned both his electability and his residency, which turned the primary into a test of party organization against the president’s endorsement.

Policy played a smaller role in coverage than the controversies did, but the candidate did release a budget plan that would have ended Minnesota’s state income tax. He promoted it in early August, the same week an administrative judge was deciding whether a pillow giveaway from his campaign deserved a full hearing.

The Recount Lawsuit in Minnesota and Why Lindell Withheld the Payment

After the Associated Press called the race, Lindell declined to concede. At his watch party he said the numbers did not add up and pointed to unspecified anomalies, without offering evidence that night, and he later said he was willing to spend up to about $1 million on a recount. Minnesota law lets a candidate request a discretionary recount in a primary only by filing paperwork and paying the cost, so the details of the state’s plan mattered a great deal.

The State Canvassing Board approved a contingent recount plan on August 18 that covered only the ballots cast for Lindell and Demuth, rather than all seven Republican candidates on the ballot. A letter from the Secretary of State’s general counsel put the cost of a full hand recount at roughly $825,000. Lindell’s campaign said the money was wired and ready, but it argued that the narrowed scope broke Minnesota law, and it asked the state to waive the payment deadline until a court could rule. The Secretary of State’s office answered that the plan followed state law and administrative rules, matched recount plans of the past two decades, and gave him ample time to object, adding that a candidate who goes to court over scope would still have to meet the payment deadline.

The deadline passed at 11:59 p.m. on August 24 with no request and no payment, according to a spokesperson for Secretary of State Steve Simon. That same day Lindell sued Simon and the Canvassing Board at the Minnesota Supreme Court, asking for a restraining order and a broader recount. On August 29 the court denied the petition in a six-page order signed by Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, finding that the state’s plan was lawful and that officials had committed no wrongful act or error. Reports on the ruling add that the justices saw his focus on anomalies as a confusion between a recount, which checks that votes were tallied correctly, and an election contest, which is the legal route for fraud allegations, and that he had not filed a contest. The decision left Demuth’s margin intact.

Voter Registration and Residency Questions

Mike Lindell was born and raised in Minnesota, but he moved to Texas in 2024 and returned in the fall of 2025 to run for governor. The state’s rules require a gubernatorial candidate to be at least 25 years old, to have lived in Minnesota for at least a year before the general election, and to be eligible to vote in the state. A candidate does not need to be registered to vote in order to file, which is why the headlines about his registration were more about political irony than about a legal barrier.

In July the Minnesota Star Tribune reported that the Secretary of State’s office had no active voter record for him while Texas still listed an active registration. Lindell said he was unsure of his status, said he would check it and said he planned to vote, and because Minnesota allows same-day registration on election day, the gap did not necessarily keep him from the polls. Critics pointed out that he had built his public life around strict scrutiny of voter rolls. Whether he registered before casting his own ballot was not confirmed in the reporting reviewed for this article.

The residency question grew more serious when the Republican Party of Minnesota wrote to Simon asking him to clarify the constitutional standard for governor, including whether the one-year period is counted to election day or to the day a winner takes office. The letter said the party took no position on his eligibility, but it noted that his own filing described him as a Texas citizen and that a separate sworn complaint, which is an allegation and not a finding, placed his domicile in Texas. Lindell responded by sending a television station pay stubs that he said show he has paid Minnesota state taxes since at least August 2025. The Secretary of State’s office said it lacks the investigative authority to review such claims and pointed to the state Supreme Court, and no court ruling on his eligibility turned up before the primary made the issue moot.

The Pillow Giveaway Complaint

Minnesota’s Fair Campaign Practices law bars giving voters anything of monetary value to influence how they vote, with exceptions for food and drink and for small promotional items worth under five dollars. The complaint against Lindell involved the Fourth of July parade in Delano, where his campaign handed out small pillows in packaging printed with his campaign name. A Democratic state Senate candidate and attorney, Dan Fiskum, filed the complaint on July 22, saying the pillows had a retail value of $34.95 each.

Lindell’s defense was that the campaign bought the little “go anywhere” pillows wholesale for about $4.90 each, that they were not the $34.95 decorative version, and that he had called the state campaign finance board beforehand and been told the giveaway was allowed. He called the case a distraction and petty politics. Administrative Law Judge Nicholas Lienesch first found that the complaint described a possible violation, and on August 6 he found probable cause after a hearing, reasoning according to local reports that pillows are not food or drink and so do not qualify for that exemption. The case was sent to a panel of three administrative law judges for a full hearing.

A probable cause finding is not a finding of guilt, and a violation of the statute is a felony under Minnesota law, according to one local report, so the stakes were real even though the dollar amounts were small. No final ruling or hearing date appeared in the coverage reviewed here, and it is not publicly confirmed whether the case continues now that the primary is over.

Liberty Vote, Smartmatic and Other Lawsuits

The Liberty Vote dispute

Dominion Voting Systems sued Lindell and MyPillow in 2021 for about $1.3 billion, saying he knowingly spread false claims that its machines rigged the 2020 election. In October 2025 the company was bought by a group led by Scott Leiendecker, a former St. Louis election official, and renamed Liberty Vote. In late June 2026 both sides filed papers dismissing the case with prejudice, which means it cannot be brought again, and a company spokesperson described the deal as a confidential settlement. The only public term is that each side pays its own legal costs, and Lindell said the end of the case freed him to campaign without a billion-dollar claim hanging over him.

Smartmatic and the Coomer verdict

The other voting-technology fights are not over. A federal jury in Colorado found in 2025 that Lindell defamed Eric Coomer, a former Dominion employee, and awarded $2.3 million, and Lindell lost a bid to overturn that verdict in March 2026. In Minnesota a federal judge ruled in the fall of 2025 that he had defamed Smartmatic through dozens of false statements, and the question of damages was still being worked out in the reporting reviewed. In a related Washington case, Judge Carl Nichols ordered him to pay $56,369 in sanctions for frivolous counterclaims, held him in civil contempt this spring and set a daily penalty, and Smartmatic later told the court that the accrued fines had passed $92,000. Lindell told NBC News in August that he did not plan to pay. A federal appeals court did relieve him of a separate $5 million award tied to his “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge about 2020 election data.

The CPAC service of papers

In March a woman approached Mike Lindell during an on-camera interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Grapevine, Texas, and said he had been served. He repeatedly asked her to step aside, said “I’m not accepting it,” and then took the papers and threw them behind him. The contents were not identified in reporting, and it was unclear whether they related to the Coomer case, which had gone against him a day earlier. Legal commentators noted that tossing papers aside does not usually undo service, though a ruling on that point would depend on the court handling the case.

Mike Lindell and MyPillow: Business Background

MyPillow, based in Shakopee, made Lindell famous through infomercials and heavy television advertising long before politics. The relationship soured commercially after he began promoting claims about the 2020 election, because several major retailers and television networks stopped carrying or advertising the products. In March he wrote on social media that the company lost about 90 percent of its business after subpoenas, banking problems and public attacks, which is his own claim and has not been independently verified. Earlier AP reporting described the company auctioning equipment and subleasing factory space as sales fell.

Mike Lindell Net Worth: What Is Actually Known

Search results for his net worth are crowded with confident numbers, and many pages say the 2026 figure is about $300 million “according to Forbes.” Those same pages disagree on when MyPillow was founded, give different marriage histories and in one case claim he has never run for office, so their numbers deserve little trust. No current Forbes estimate for 2026 could be confirmed during research for this article, and because MyPillow is privately held there is no audited public number to check.

Court records offer firmer clues, although they point in different directions. In the Smartmatic sanctions case, Judge Nichols noted that the MyPillow founder had about $14.8 million in assets, while Lindell claimed a net worth of negative $18.7 million. The judge found the documents he supplied insufficient, citing unrebutted evidence that he had paid for legal services in other cases after the sanctions order, and Smartmatic argued that he also spent $187,037.87 in campaign funds buying copies of his own book. At an earlier hearing Lindell told the judge he was living on about $1,000 a week and that his main assets were two houses and a truck, a description the judge called non-verifiable until financial records were filed.

FedEx has separately asked a federal court to collect millions of dollars it says went unpaid for shipping, alleging false promises about payment, and those are claims in a pending case, not findings. Taken together, the most defensible statement is that no verified current net worth exists, and that the public record shows a gap between his claim of deep debt and a judge’s conclusion that he had assets and access to funds.

What Is Known About Lindell’s Wife, and Why There Are No Photos Here

Lindell’s current wife is named Kendra, and news reports say the couple married around 2024, after which he lived in Texas for a year, where her family is based. Pages promising wedding details and photos list marriage years ranging from 2010 to 2023, and they disagree on her surname, her career and even how many times he has been married, so none of that can be treated as confirmed. Because she is a private individual and no reliable outlet has published verified personal details, this article does not repeat them and does not include photos.

Latest Mike Lindell News: A Late Pivot to Demuth

On October 16 Lindell told Forum News Service that he was dropping his legal challenge to the primary and would support Demuth and other Republicans, urging his followers to do the same. He said he had spoken with the president and encouraged him to switch his endorsement, recalling that the president wondered whether she could win, so whether Trump has changed course is not confirmed. A Klobuchar campaign spokesperson criticized the move, tying Demuth to what the spokesperson called the MAGA agenda.

He also said he plans to sue voting machine companies using primary data his team obtained through public-records requests to Minnesota counties, but no filing had been reported at the time of writing. In the days after, a clip circulated of him telling supporters on a video call that the president looked more tired than he had seen him, a remark that drew national coverage even though it had nothing to do with the Minnesota race.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who will be on the Minnesota governor ballot in November?

Demuth for the Republicans, Klobuchar for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and Steven Young for the Green Party, according to MPR News. Election day is November 3.

How old is Lindell?

News reports in July 2026 gave his age as 65.

Is Lindell still the CEO of MyPillow?

He announced in July that he was stepping down after 22 years to focus on the campaign. No report reviewed for this article says he has returned to the role, so who currently runs the company day to day is not confirmed here.

Was he the only Trump-endorsed candidate to lose a primary this year?

No. Sky News counted him as the third endorsee to lose a 2026 primary, though a tally like that depends on how each outlet counts, and the AP simply called the result rare.

Where was Lindell strongest in the primary?

KTTC reported that he won seven of the ten counties in its southeast Minnesota viewing area, including Mower County by nearly eight percentage points, even though he lost the state by about eleven points.

Conclusion

The 2026 chapter of Mike Lindell’s public life ended in a defeat that stayed defeated, and the most useful things to watch now are the unresolved Smartmatic damages, the pillow giveaway case, his promised lawsuit against voting machine companies and the November vote he is now urging people to join. Until courts or official records settle the open questions, the safest approach is to rely on rulings and filings and to treat viral net worth and personal-life claims with caution.

Disclaimer

This article is for general information only and reflects public reporting available as of October 22, 2026. Some legal matters described here are ongoing or disputed, allegations and probable cause findings are not findings of guilt, and details may change as courts and officials act. Nothing here is legal, financial or investment advice.

EXPLORE MORE: José Balmaceda Riera Fertility Clinic: Who the Name Refers To and What Is Confirmed