MINNESOTA, Jan 5 – Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said on Monday that he will be ending his bid for re-election amid a fraud scandal in the state that had recently become the focus of US President Donald Trump.
Walz, who ran for Vice President alongside Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024, said he decided to step out of the race to “focus on the work” of governor rather than a campaign.
Republicans have criticised Walz for his handling of fraud involving the state’s Medicaid programme and childcare funding. Walz has said that his government is taking measures to prevent future fraud.
“But as I reflected on this moment with my family and my team over the holidays, I came to the conclusion that I can’t give a political campaign my all,” he said. “Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences.”
Among the critics was Trump, whose administration had recently frozen federal funds for childcare in Minnesota.
Prosecutors have alleged that criminals have defrauded the state of approximately $9bn in misused social assistance funding and nearly $300m in misused COVID funding.
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday said the Justice Department has charged 98 individuals in Minnesota as part of its wide-ranging fraud investigation, adding that 85 of those charged were of “Somali descent”.
However, many of those charges pre-date Trump’s second term.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has also shot back that local and federal authorities have spent years combatting fraud in the state, which he called a “serious issue”.
In a post on the social media platform X on Wednesday, Walz said Trump is “using an issue he doesn’t give a damn about as an excuse to hurt working Minnesotans”.
A 43-minute video, posted to YouTube the day after Christmas by a 23-year-old conservative content creator, claimed with little evidence Somali-run child care centers in Minnesota were fraudulently taking funding meant to provide child care for low-income families. The video, boosted by Vice President JD Vance and tech billionaire Elon Musk, quickly racked up millions of views.
The impact was swift: DHS and the FBI ramped up their presence in the state, and federal funding for child care in the entire state was frozen.
The governor had faced calls to resign from Republican lawmakers in the state, amid mounting criticism over the recent allegations of fraud and a lack of any on-camera response from Walz since the video was released.
