Minnesota’s Governor ends his re-election run as the scandal bites.

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By The Editorial Board – Jan. 5, 2026 5:20 pm ET – Wall Street Journal

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced today that he is abandoning his re-election campaign for governor at the State Capitol building in St. Paul. Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

It isn’t often that politicians pay a price for the failures of government. But on Monday we may have seen a rare and welcome example as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz ended his campaign for a third term in November. The transparent reason is that the state’s sundry welfare scams have become a political vulnerability for him and his fellow Democrats.

More than 90 defendants have been charged in schemes to defraud Minnesota’s various welfare programs. The first indictments were filed under Joe Biden and involved a pandemic-era program for feeding children when schools were closed. But the scope of the investigations has grown as prosecutors uncover how more programs were looted.

Defendants allegedly set up sham businesses and falsely claimed to provide meals to children; paid kickbacks to parents to enroll kids without autism in autism “treatment;” and billed Medicaid for phony housing services to addicts, among other scams. Some state workers raised red flags about the apparent fraud, but the money kept flowing.

Mr. Walz at first defended the welfare grift as a regrettable consequence of his state’s charity. “Right now, we’re the most generous state in the nation when it comes to these programs and services—and we should be proud of that,” he said last April. He has largely stuck to that line, though he has recently promised under political pressure to do more to stop criminals.

As the welfare heist has drawn national attention, Democrats have blamed Mr. Walz and claimed the problems are isolated to Minnesota. While the state’s lax spending oversight enabled the fraud, its vast entitlement programs invited it. When government throws around money with little concern for results, this is what happens.

Democrats for years have hailed Minnesota as a Midwest model of progressive governance, with its high taxes and Scandinavian-style entitlements. This was among the reasons Kamala Harris tapped Mr. Walz as her running mate. Now Democrats worry that voter disgust with welfare fraud could evict Democrats from Minnesota’s statehouse in November.

Democrats boast a one-seat majority in the state Senate, and two House vacancies have given Republicans temporary control of the House. Progressives may be happy to sacrifice Mr. Walz to preserve their control in St. Paul and avoid a national debate about whether the vast tentacles of the welfare state have grown too big to manage—or justify.