In Minnesota’s most conservative county, GOP governor hopefuls weigh in on ICE shooting, criticize Walz

LITTLE FALLS, Minn. – Ten GOP gubernatorial candidates remained laser-focused on the state’s ongoing fraud scandals in one of the crowded field’s first gatherings since 2026 began with a flurry of high-profile news in Minnesota.

Their message: It’s not just Gov. Tim Walz who has to go. The hold Democrats have had on the governorship for the past two decades must end as well.

The Morrison County GOP forum was shadowed by the race-shifting events of the past week, from Walz announcing he is no longer running for a third term, to the federal government stepping up its investigative efforts into Minnesota’s massive fraud scandal, to the killing of Minneapolis resident Renee Good by a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

Many of the candidates focused on Republican electability. Several suggested the GOP must stay united without a drawn-out nominating process. Others said their strategy must be increasing voter participation in greater Minnesota during this midterm election, as well as gaining traction in the Twin Cities suburbs.

But one of the biggest applause lines of the night came when Kendall Qualls, a military veteran and nonprofit leader who ran for governor in 2022, pivoted from a question on energy policies to address the Minneapolis killing that has spurred days of protests against ICE in Minnesota and nationwide.

He blamed Democratic politicians for egging on Minnesotans to protest the stepped-up immigration enforcement in the state during the past month. That resistance, he said, created the conditions for the Jan. 7 tragedy.

“She shouldn’t have even been in that perimeter” where ICE was conducting operations, Qualls said. “Gov. Walz, Mayor Frey and his chief of police have blood on their hands for what happened. This is a leadership problem, completely avoidable, like all of our freaking problems in this state. We’ve been a national embarrassment for eight years, and I am done with it.”

The federal Department of Homeland Security announced in early January that it was carrying out the largest immigration enforcement operation in history with some 2,000 agents heading to the Twin Cities.

“I expect the top leaders of our state — that’s Gov. Walz and Mayor Frey — to not incite violence but come out against it instead of calling ICE agents the ‘Gestapo,’ ” Demuth said. “That’s poor leadership from the very top. Cooler heads have to prevail.”

More than three-quarters of voters in Morrison County, home to the state’s largest military installation in Camp Ripley, chose President Donald Trump in 2024, a higher proportion than any other county. The crowd of about 300 got fired up about several red-meat conservative topics. All 10 candidates agreed that life starts at conception and said they are against mandatory safe storage laws on guns stored inside private residences.

The rural audience applauded raucously to complaints about wolf management plans and about too much government regulation, specifically relating to the state’s Department of Natural Resources hurting farms.

But candidates’ focus on what they deemed inept governance by Walz and other Democrats in the wake of the fraud scandal dominated the evening.

Republican candidate Chris Madel, a Twin Cities attorney, said in an interview before the night’s forum that “there’s the money aspect, and then there’s the loss of hope people have in their own government — and that’s what really bothers me the most. There’s such a loss of trust. There’s been zero state enforcement with respect to any of this fraud. The only people who’ve been doing anything about it is the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Fraudsters are the biggest problem.