There is a certain kind of stubbornness that no longer seems like strength. It seems to be a pattern. Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow, spent years and millions of dollars saying that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Now he is focusing on his own loss—a Republican primary for governor of Minnesota that he lost by 45,000 votes—with the same amount of energy. I don’t see a squeaker there. That’s not a margin that makes you think very deeply. Still, here we are.
Lindell lost the GOP primary for governor of Minnesota by 11 points on August 11. Lisa Demuth, who is Speaker of the Minnesota State House, beat Lindell. Lindell didn’t give up; instead, he asked for a full hand recount. Almost $825,000 of his own money was promised to pay for it. Then, when the state told him that the recount would only look at votes cast for him or Demuth, as the law says, he refused to pay and instead went to court.
He said that every ballot from every candidate in both the Democratic and Republican primaries should be included in the recount. He said that electronic voting machines were to blame for “anomalies.” It was made clear by the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office that the plan to recount follows state law and is the same way that all Minnesota recounts have been done in the past.
That was what the Minnesota Supreme Court said. It was written by Chief Justice Natalie E. Hudson on Saturday that Lindell’s claims “fail on the merits.” Her words were calm and easy to understand. She said that the state canvassing board and the office of the secretary of state were “not doing anything wrong, leaving something out, or making a mistake.” She went even further and said that Lindell’s focus on supposed problems “confuses the purpose of a manual recount with an election contest.”” Those are two different court cases with different rules. It looked like Lindell’s team either didn’t know about that difference or didn’t want to accept it.
It’s hard not to notice how much this looks like what happened in 2020. Lindell spent years spreading false ideas about voting machines like Dominion and Smartmatic, saying they were used to change the results of elections when there was no solid evidence to support these claims. Several times, courts threw out those claims. In June 2025, it was found that he had lied about a former Dominion worker. He owes Smartmatic $56,369 in court-ordered fines and, according to his lawyers, he says he can’t pay. He’s said in public that he’s not going to pay, ever.
Now that he lost the election himself, the language is the same. Strange things. Algorithms. Computers and electronics. It’s almost like the theory always comes first and the evidence is suppose to follow. It hasn’t yet.
On Saturday nite, Lindell told NBC News that he was going to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and that his team had sent Freedom of Information Act requests to all 87 Minnesota counties to get raw election data for a separate investigation. “I’m ready to pay even more.” He said, “I don’t care what it costs.” Given his history with court-ordered payments, it’s still not clear if that money will actually show up.
For now, Demuth’s primary win stands. She is now the Republican candidate for the general election, where she will run against Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is run by the Democrats. The race is going to be tough. It will require attention. He will almost certainly still be filing paperwork about August 11 somewhere.
In one version of this story, someone who really wants to make sure the election is fair follows the law, gives strong evidence, and accepts the court’s decision as the final word. The one by Lindell doesn’t look quite like that. It looks more like the face of a man who has made it a habit to never give up, not in 2020, not now, and maybe never. He has the right to do that. But courts, even the highest one in Minnesota, keep telling him the same thing.
