The Big Lie in the Land of 10,000 Lakes: Top five Minnesota GOP gubernatorial candidates refuse to say Biden legitimately won the 2020 election

On Wednesday night, conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt started a Minnesota GOP gubernatorial debate by asking all five candidates if President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election. Not one of them came close to saying “yes.”

Hewitt, one of the moderators for the debate, started by asking Dr. Scott Jensen, “In your opinion, did President Biden win a constitutional majority of the Electoral College? If yes, how definitive is your conclusion, and if no, could you please explain which states you think are in dispute and why?”

Dr. Jensen simply said, “I don’t know.” It was the most direct answer to the question, with the remaining candidates citing that Biden was either simply declared the winner or that voter fraud tainted the election.  Biden’s 2020 win has been verified time and time again by both state election officials and the U.S. Congress.

The closest to a “yes” answer came from State Sen. Michelle Benson, who got asked twice by Hewitt to answer the question after originally dodging it. She said, “He was certified by Congress as having won the Electoral College.”

State Sen. Paul Gazelka gave a similar, if slightly more opaque answer when he said, “…I don’t think the election was fair, but I do think we have the results that we have, and the Electoral College is the way we determine the election. Each state does their own deal. I’m not a big fan of how that all played out.”

Dr. Neil Shah claimed Gov. Tim Walz and Minn. Secretary of State Steve Simon “aided and abetted” in a conspiracy to constrict the state legislature’s oversight of the 2020 election to weaken voter integrity in the state. He also cast doubt on every election held in Chicago before saying Minnesota “is the only state we should really be concerned about.”

Lexington Mayor Mike Murphy told Hewitt, “I do believe there was voter fraud at a massive scale across this country. Can I pinpoint the evidence down and everything? No, absolutely not. I’m not privy to the scheme and the insight of where it happened. But we did know that it did occur here during the primary in Ilhan Omar’s district, and Project Veritas exposed that, with ballot harvesting.” Murphy also joked about the idea of dead people voting, saying “I have a big favor of all of you to ask, and that’s don’t let me vote Democrat when I die please.”

The Project Veritas report Murphy cites was reported locally as being dubious when released in Sept. 2020.

Biden won the state of Minnesota in 2020 with over 233,000 more votes than former President Donald Trump. A recent Associated Press report found fewer than 475 combined potential voter fraud cases across six states, a number that would make no difference in the Electoral College results.

“These conspiracy theories make it clear that all five Republican candidates for governor have more allegiance to Donald Trump than they do to Minnesotans and our democracy,” Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Chairman Ken Martin commented in a press release after the debate. “Every candidate launched baseless and reprehensible attacks on the legitimacy of our elections in order to spread fear and disinformation. We must all come together to reject these blatant attacks on democracy if we are to remain a country with free and fair elections.”