Lisa Demuth is running as a moderate. Her record is conservative

MINNEAPOLIS — Republican Lisa Demuth has emphasized her bipartisan credentials during her campaign for governor and portrayed herself as a pragmatic conservative who is focused on affordability and rooting out fraud.

Demuth has an affable style and rarely — if ever — criticizes her political foes with insults or obscenities that have become more common in modern politics. She has negotiated deals with DFL lawmakers and Gov. Tim Walz with civility.

But Demuth’s record also reveals a portrait of a politician from a deep-red district who has reliably fought for conservative priorities on abortion access, transgender health care and education policy.

In the final stretch of the campaign, Democrats have highlighted those conservative priorities and argued Demuth is a partisan ideologue who is out of step with a majority of the state. The DFL has pointed to her views on abortion at the Minnesota Capitol and a refusal to admit Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

Still, since she won the GOP nomination for governor, Demuth has focused on kitchen-table concerns and mostly steered away from social issues that may be more polarizing in a state that has not backed a Republican for a statewide office since 2006.

Demuth argues her record as House speaker shows she governs toward the middle in a state that is politically divided, regardless of her personal beliefs. She presided over a tied state House, meaning bills needed DFL and GOP votes to pass.

As a legislator, Demuth said she also understood it was her responsibility to represent everyone in her district, even those who didn’t vote for her.

“I would do the same thing as governor,” Demuth told the Minnesota Star Tribune earlier this month. “... I am there to serve the people of Minnesota.”

Demuth’s political rise in Cold Spring, a small city outside St. Cloud, started with a tenure on the school board during a time when she said those positions were not particularly partisan.

She then joined the Legislature in 2019, representing a district that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the following two presidential elections.

Before she took over as the House Republican leader, Demuth sponsored bills that aligned with her ruby-red constituency or leaned into culture-war fights.

She sought to ban abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected, prohibit transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports and put a constitutional amendment before voters that would give parents a fundamental right to direct their child’s education within public schools.

A Pentecostal Christian, Demuth has also been reliably conservative on social issues. She voted against bills that made Minnesota a refuge for people seeking gender-affirming care and banned the discredited practice of conversion therapy, which seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

When Demuth ran to lead House Republicans, she won over a sprawling Republican caucus that spans from moderate suburban lawmakers to hardline rural conservatives.

There has been less Republican infighting during her tenure after turmoil bogged down her predecessor. That is likely because of Demuth’s collaborative leadership, however, and not that she was markedly more conservative.

“I think it has more to do with her relational skills,” said state Rep. Walter Hudson, an Albertville Republican known for his combative style and wide social media following.

Hudson described Demuth as focused on getting things done — someone who can balance her personal beliefs with practical reality to govern effectively.

As House speaker, Demuth has been at the helm for a fairly typical Republican agenda that included proposals for tax cuts, less regulation, anti-fraud measures and tougher criminal sentencing.

She helped negotiate and pass legislation with wide appeal and bipartisan support, such as a one-year reduction in car-tab fees and property tax relief this year. Demuth has — at length — praised spending $90 million on the unglamorous effort to modernize county information technology systems.

But Demuth also negotiated for wins that fired up the Republican base. In 2025, Demuth’s big political victory was cutting adult undocumented immigrants off state-subsidized health care.

DFL legislators said at the time that Demuth turned down modifications to the state’s new paid family and medical leave program — a concession that would have pleased traditionally conservative business organizations — in favor of the immigrant health care repeal. The move saved Minnesota relatively little cash but drew applause from Republicans who have connected with Trump’s hardline immigration agenda.

“I think it’s in alignment to what President Trump and others were doing,” former DFL state Sen. Jeff Hayden said of Demuth’s choice. “Her record at the Capitol is pretty clear about the things that she fought for.”

Demuth’s campaign said Democrats were offering minimal changes to family leave that weren’t substantive enough to accept.

Earlier this year, Demuth blocked a bill to ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines after the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School. Polling shows such policies have majority support in the state but are opposed by a staunchly pro-gun-rights Republican Party.

Demuth and House Republicans instead proposed more money for private school security and mental health after the shooting, along with reversing the state’s ban on conversion therapy — an apparent response to the Annunciation shooter’s gender identity.

Nevertheless, many of Demuth’s opponents in the Republican primary for governor painted her as too willing to cut deals with Democrats. The GOP base at the state convention did not view her as the most conservative option to endorse.

“If she was me, if she was a flaming conservative firebrand who held nothing back, then she never would have had a problem at the convention or had to fight so hard in the primary,” Hudson said.

At that convention, Demuth leaned on Hudson and others to validate her with GOP activists. She emphasized parts of her record that might appeal most to that audience, including her anti-abortion legislation. (Demuth has also called the right to an abortion in Minnesota settled law, though she also pledged to appoint conservative judges who could play a role in limiting the procedure.)

Demuth distributed a flyer saying she “fights and wins for the MAGA agenda,” emphasized ending health coverage for adult undocumented immigrants and said she “led the effort to stop the Democrats from taking our guns.”

A spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the DFL nominee for governor, said some of Demuth’s positions are out of step with the state.

“A candidate who tried to ban abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest and promises to ‘fight for the MAGA agenda’ is too extreme for Minnesota,” spokesperson Darwin Forsyth said.

Hudson said he spoke at the convention and backed Demuth in the primary because she has the best chance to win a general election and actually enact conservative priorities.

“If you’re one of these folks who cares so much about the issues and the ideology and the principles and philosophy, and all the things that people love to pontificate about, then the number one thing you need to be concerned about is winning,” Hudson said.

Demuth’s attempt to win over GOP convention goers ultimately fell short, however, prompting her to continue on to the primary election. She also lost Trump’s endorsement to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

As she sought to win over a wider swath of the Republican electorate, Demuth still walked a fine line to avoid angering her party’s base.

In the days after the convention, Demuth distanced herself from a moment of silence that delegates held for former Minneapolis police office Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of second-degree murder for the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

But she also would not rule out supporting a pardon for Chauvin, either.

On the campaign trail, Demuth similarly would not say Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election and did not dispute Trump’s false claims of a rigged election.

When asked in July by the Minnesota Star Tribune whether the 2020 race was rigged, Demuth said: “The way that I look at it is President Trump is our president now, he won in 2024, that is what we’re working with right now.”

Asked again who won the 2020 election, Demuth said: “Looks like President Biden was our president in 2020.”

Demuth’s campaign declined to answer further questions this week about her positions on the 2020 election and pardoning Chauvin.

Instead, her spokesman issued a statement saying Klobuchar is the one who is “out of step” with Minnesota, arguing she hasn’t distanced herself enough from progressives like Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar.

“Out of step is taking 10 days and a focus group to say Tim Walz shouldn’t have pardoned a child rapist,” spokesman Hank Long said. “Out of step is Sen. Klobuchar thinking it’s okay to abuse staff and then ask Minnesotans to give you thousands more employees and control of the entire state government. Sen. Klobuchar spent 20 years in Washington, D.C. getting more out of step with Minnesota with every passing year.”

Demuth has largely focused on affordability, fraud and public safety since she won the GOP nomination for governor in August.

But her campaign ads have still echoed themes that have animated her party’s conservative base, including tying the Somali community to fraud and violence.

Hayden, the former DFL senator, said he has been surprised to see Demuth, who is biracial, lean into that messaging.

“People are really kind of flabbergasted that she would be kind of race-baiting as a woman of color,” Hayden said. “But I think that goes along with the narrative that the Trump administration and the far right is doing.”

Amy Frederiksen, a GOP strategist and former state Senate majority leader, dismissed efforts to portray Demuth as a ‘MAGA’-aligned Republican based on her stances on social issues.

Frederiksen said she also does not think Demuth’s statements about the 2020 election and a possible pardon for Chauvin will be a liability in a year when pocketbook issues are top of mind.

“It seems like the economy and the fraud are the top issues and I think she’s been doing … as good of a job as she can on that,” Frederiksen said.

“People who call her MAGA, they have not met people who are MAGA.”