Mike Lindell looms over Minnesota's race for governor
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Mike Lindell has reshaped Minnesota's governor's race.
Having secured the endorsement of President Donald Trump, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell is confident he can win Minnesota’s conservative vote.
MPR News host Clay Masters spoke with Lindell at the end of July, before the chair of the Minnesota Republican Party raised doubts about his eligibility to run in the governor's race based on his residency and before Lindell stepped down as the CEO of MyPillow.
The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity. Click the audio player above to listen to the conversation.
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How will you approach the state budget and when voters can expect to see specifics?
You should be able to see it today, if not by tomorrow. We're getting it up as fast as we can, and it's amazing. What you're going to see is, you know you have typical candidates say, ‘I'm going to do this. I'm going to lower your taxes.’ I wanted to be different. I wanted to show how we're going to do it.
How are you going to do that?
Most of it involves your healthcare, and you'll have to see it. It hasn't been done — or it's been done, but not by Minnesota. And, in fact, Walz passed something about three-four weeks ago, where if you go to private physician, you can use that deduction now against your deductible. With when you see the budget, you're gonna we're gonna save, I think it's upwards of $25 to $30 billion. Not just in cuts, making everything better feasibly. Then you could eliminate our $23 million billion income tax, so you could have zero income tax in Minnesota.
There has been a new Office of Inspector general that's been passed into law to be established that is going to look into fraud. You're laughing. Are you saying it doesn’t go far enough? It was bipartisan passed.
I don’t care who passes it. A Republican or Democrat — or who’s blocking it. When I'm governor, the people in Minnesota have had it. They want results. They want to see people prosecuted. This money would — not only the money stole from us — but also think of the people that really needed these things. There's people out there in Minnesota. They need the money from these programs.
So this each one of them, I have looked at already. We're taking each one apart. We're not leaving any one behind. So when you see this in my budget, it shows you what we save there. But you’re also going to know that when I'm governor, if there's any of them blocking us further, I don't care if it's a Democrat or Republican, you got a common sense solution, and it's blocked — like they always get blocked from because it's well the Democrats are blocking the Republican — the people in Minnesota are going to hear loud and clear hey they're blocking something that's going to help all of us.
I don't care what party you're in we're putting in common sense policies to make Minnesota so we can live here and be affordable and have good lives. This politics that have been put in is just disgusting.
At the same time, right now the Minnesota legislature is about as evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats as it can go. If you were the governor, how would you work in a bipartisan manner, or with a legislature where Democrats, at the moment anyway, have a slight majority?
For me, I don't believe you know that's — if you have common sense solutions for the people, it should be easy. And I had to do this for the last five and a half years working on our election platforms. I worked with Democrats and Republicans, and I can sit here and tell you right now, 90 percent of what I was blocked were Republicans. And everyone's going, “Well, Mike, I thought you wanted — you're a Republican.” You know, I'm common sense. I'm a conservative. I'm a conservative Christian. Okay, but if there's a common sense solution, you got to go with this. I'm a businessman first and foremost.
How do you strike a balance between policing for waste, fraud, abuse and making sure people get the services that they need?
As far as what? The services that you need?
Social services or the things that the state government provides.
Well, let me tell you, this my wheelhouse. When I quit crack cocaine and everything, by the grace of God, on January 16, 2009, I spent the next 12 years spending millions of dollars in Minneapolis and Detroit — cities, inner cities — helping people in need. What I did is I set up this amazing platform as a prototype, using private sector money to subsidize the programs you're talking about. Now that that's been like a parked car. Incidentally, Keith Ellison has attacked me for even having that — I haven't been able to do the program. The program's been sitting there.
So when I say park car, that was my focus. But doing that, you want the biggest bang for your buck. I want money put in here. I wanted it to, you know, here's your return on your investment. People that got the help, but also people want to help. And they're fed up with donating stuff where you only a nickel goes to the cause, so I set it up where I was the government, and these guys all put in their money, and it saved 40 percent — money poured in.
So you're saying you created a government?
No. Okay. I'll give you an example. You think of a big website — almost like a give-send-go. If you had a vet in need, okay. If I was out there soliciting, here's a vet in need. The streets of Minneapolis, you had all these people in addiction, and now I'm saying, ‘hey, we're gonna we're gonna give we're gonna help these people out, get them to Teen Challenge, and we need help with we help to subsidize their treatment,’ right? And people [want] to help, but they got to trust that the money's going to get there.
We have lost trust here in Minnesota because of the fraud. People lost trust, and they've lost trust because of all this money that was shipped out, and these things. And maybe these were good programs, but also I'm vetting the programs because I'm very good at improving each one. So it really gets to the help for the least amount of money and get rid of all the red tape, so to speak.
Between now and Aug. 11, what are you going to be doing to connect with voters to make them feel that you are the right person to vote for on the primary day?
Putting out that budget that their income tax can be eliminated, and they're not going to say this isn't just some big old, you know, pie-in-the-sky thing to get elected. No, I'm basically getting out my — that — plan so they see it'll be affordable. But also, I'm going to have other things that I'll be talking about — bring tourism back to Minnesota. We're known for our great 10,000 lakes. There's many things. Just getting the word out of what I'm gonna do.
What I'm not gonna do is sit and bash these other candidates like this typical politician. Oh, Mike Lindell hasn't paid his taxes. He lived in Texas for a year. You know what? They can bash me, but the public knows me. They've been bashing me for years and years, and I will not back down. I will never stop trying to save our state, and save our country and save our economy. That's it.
If you don't win the primary on Aug. 11, are you going to rally behind the Republican who does?
Absolutely, 100 percent. We got to save Minnesota. I mean, that's it. And I'd even give all my plan — but I just I'm very afraid they wouldn't implement them, and they don't they don't have the courage to go up against the industries we're going to be going up against. Everything from teachers unions, to big pharma, to the farmers.
I will never back down until we got Minnesota's affordable, and then we'll go beyond that. We want to go from the worst, one of the worst to the first.
