Election denier and President Trump loyalist Mike Lindell is toying with the idea of running for governor of Minnesota against one of the president’s chief nemeses of the moment — Governor Tim Walz.

Mr. Lindell — the MyPillow founder — says he is not 100 percent sure he’ll run yet, but filed the paperwork on Wednesday in case he decides to join the race to defeat Mr. Walz.

“I’m 98 percent sure I’m going to,” Mr. Lindell told MPR News.

Mr. Lindell would join a crowded list of Republicans in the primary, with eleven other candidates already in the race. He has scheduled a press conference next week to discuss his future.

While Mr. Lindell hasn’t officially entered the race, Democrats are already attacking him. “Mike Lindell is the latest extreme, out of touch candidate to jump into what is becoming a more chaotic and dangerous race to the far-right by the day,” the spokeswoman for the Democratic Governors Association, Izzi Levy, said in a statement.

Calling him sleazy, Ms. Levy added that, “Minnesotans can rest easy that we’re going to put to bed any dreams Lindell has of bringing his extreme agenda to the governor’s office.”

Mr. Lindell has insisted that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump by rigged electronic voting machines and Chinese and Iranian hackers. He has lost multiple legal challenges over those claims.

In September, a federal judge ruled that Mr. Lindell had defamed the election company Smartmatic with false statements. In June, a federal jury found Mr. Lindell had defamed a former Dominion Voting Systems official he falsely claimed helped in the scheme to get President Biden elected.

Mr. Lindell is also embroiled in other litigation. Mr. Lindell promised $5 million to anyone who could prove his “election rigging” data was bad. A software developer jumped at the chance but says he was stiffed out of the prize money. That man is now asking the Supreme Court to revive an arbitration judgement that was thrown out by an appeals court over an interpretation of the rules.

Mr. Lindell has claimed his fortune has vanished due to his work uncovering claims of election corruption. He testified that he once had a net worth of $60 million but is now millions of dollars in debt. Major retailers stopped carrying his products due to his views. He continues to sell his pillows online.

Mr. Walz announced in September that he is seeking a third term after a failed run on Vice President Kamala Harris’s ticket last November. The governor more recently has found himself a target of Mr. Trump, who used his Thanksgiving message to call Mr. Walz “seriously retarded.” 

The House Oversight Committee and the Treasury Department have launched investigations into Mr. Walz’s administration over its alleged role in a massive fraud scheme that officials say cost taxpayers more than $1 billion.