Minnesota Governor Walz will not seek third term, to focus on welfare fraud scandal

By Jonathan Allen

Jan 5 (Reuters) – Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will not seek a third term in office, he announced on Monday, saying he would instead focus on allegations of fraud in the state’s welfare system that have become a crisis after mounting pressure and attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.

Walz, a 61-year-old former teacher and coach, became governor of the Midwestern state in 2019, and gained national prominence in 2024 as the running mate of then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate who lost to Trump.

Recently, the Trump administration has singled out Walz and Minnesota, including its large population of Somali Americans and Somali immigrants, over allegations of fraud, dating back to 2020, by some nonprofit groups that administer the state’s childcare and other social services programs with support from federal funding. 

At least 56 people have pleaded guilty since federal prosecutors started to bring charges in 2022, under Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.

In his announcement, Walz referred to the fraud scandal as a crisis, and said he wanted to “let others worry about the election while I focus on the work”. He also criticized Trump and other Republicans, who personally deride Walz, for what he called bad-faith attacks.

The election is in November. U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, is considering a run for governor, but has not made any announcement.

“For the last several years, an organized group of criminals have sought to take advantage of our state’s generosity,” Walz said in his statement. “And even as we make progress in the fight against the fraudsters, we now see an organized group of political actors seeking to take advantage of the crisis.”

He said the state welcomed federal support to fight fraud, but said Trump and other Republicans “want to make our state a colder, meaner place” and called them “opportunists who are willing to hurt our people to score a few cheap points.”

He appeared before reporters on Monday morning at his office in Saint Paul, the state capital, to read his statement aloud before leaving without taking questions.

Trump shared a statement on social media insulting Walz and Democratic governors of other states, calling them corrupt and “dishonest and incompetent.”

The Trump administration, which has vowed to deport more immigrants than any prior administration, has singled out Minnesota for investigations and in social media posts, alleging rampant fraud is being committed by nonprofit groups serving immigrants in the welfare system.

In 2022, federal prosecutors brought charges against the nonprofit group Feeding Our Future, accusing it of fraud over COVID-19 pandemic relief funds intended to provide meals to children. Most of those who have pleaded guilty so far are Somali Americans, although the founder of the nonprofit is a white American woman, who was convicted last year of fraud charges.

The prosecutions have continued under Trump, and he and other administration officials have frequently and sharply criticized the state’s Somali communities, as well as Walz, and Representative Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American Democrat who represents a Minneapolis-based district in Congress.

On Friday, the Trump administration released a statement describing what it called its “relentless assault to dismantle the massive fraud empires built in Minnesota under the watch of incompetent Democrats like Tim Walz and his Radical Left enablers”.

The same day, Walz signed an executive order that creates a new investigative unit focused on fraud.

Although the scandal came to light more than three years ago, the Trump administration’s attention has returned to it in recent days thanks in part to a 42-minute video posted on social media on Dec. 26 by Nick Shirley, a pro-Trump influencer who has met with the president at the White House’s invitation.

The video, which purports to expose extensive fraud at childcare centers in Minnesota’s Somali community, has since received over 138 million views. 

On Monday, Shirley, 23, wrote on social media: “I ENDED TIM WALZ.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Helen Coster in New York;Editing by Nick Zieminski)