Amy Klobuchar

It’s never particularly big news when a MAGA candidate wins a Republican primary, particularly in a blue state like Minnesota and especially when the near-certain Democratic nominee is the highly popular U.S. senator Amy Klobuchar. But there’s MAGA, and there’s really crazy MAGA, so if (as the polls indicate is likely) really crazy MAGA dude Mike Lindell (a.k.a. the MyPillow Guy) wins the GOP nomination for governor of Minnesota on August 11, it will be a signpost of strange times, even if he has approximately zero chance of winning in November.

Lindell, in case you have somehow missed his constant antics, resembles his friend Donald Trump in that he is both an extremist political figure and a self-promoting huckster for his pillow brand. But Trump certainly never promoted Trump Steaks or Trump Vodka as relentlessly as Lindell has flogged MyPillow, presumably converting his cult status among the more lurid of election deniers into cold hard cash. But the MyPillow story has an unusual twist, as the Minnesota Star Tribune recently noted:

Lindell started Chaska-based MyPillow in 2004 by selling the product at fairs. MyPillow products have sold by the tens of millions from the shelves of big-box national retailers and direct through his ubiquitous TV pitches.

But while his pillow empire was gaining lucrative traction, Lindell wrote, his wife of 20 years left him, he went bankrupt and became addicted to crack cocaine until finding sobriety in 2009.

True to form, Lindell self-published a successful memoir titled What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO. But the 2020 presidential election and his peculiar role among election deniers soon overshadowed his personal story. Unlike many of his peers, Lindell hasn’t remained vague about his conspiracy theories: He’s gone right out there and named names, leading to three potentially ruinous defamation suits against him (one by Dominion Voting Systems, the same outfit that successfully sued Fox News; another by former Dominion executive Eric Croomer; and a third by another voting technology firm, Smartmatic. The first suit was settled with the details unknown, though it did happen after Dominion was purchased by a former Republican election official; the second resulted in a $2.3 million judgment against Lindell that he is appealing; and the third, involving a billion-dollar claim, is still underway, though the judge in the case found that Lindell had made 51 false statements about Smartmatic. Suffice it to say Lindell needs to sell a lot more pillows to pay his victims and his lawyers. Which could be why he’s running for governor.

Unsurprisingly, he won Trump’s endorsement, even though Lindell finished far out of the money at the official endorsing convention of the Minnesota Republican Party (he was eliminated in the fourth of ten ballots and characteristically blamed balloting glitches on electronic machines). But he has gradually gained strength among the party rank and file, and in the latest public polling from Survey USA, he leads former Minnesota House Speaker Linda Demuth by a 35 percent to 26 percent margin (official party endorsee Kendall Qualls has faded and holds only 11 percent of the vote now).

There hasn’t been much public polling of the general-election matchups, but what we have is not good news for Lindell. A mid-June survey from the Star Tribune showed Demuth trailing Klobuchar by 8 percent and Qualls trailing Klobuchar by 11 percent. But Lindell trails Klobucher by 17 percent (53 percent to 36 percent). Lindell’s personal favorability rating, moreover, was pegged at 19 percent favorable and 42 percent unfavorable. Incredibly, 19 percent of Minnesotans said they “don’t recognize” Lindell’s name.

Perhaps they need to see some video documentation:

Must sell more pillows!