Republican candidate Chris Madel has announced he is ending his campaign for Minnesota governor following the shooting death of Alex Preti by federal agents in Minneapolis.
Madel announced late Monday that he was withdrawing from the campaign, citing the fallout from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, where two people were killed by federal agents.
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“I cannot support the Republican Party’s stated retaliation against the people of this state, and I do not see myself as part of a party that would do such a thing,” Madel said in a roughly 11-minute video shared on X.
Madel, the attorney who represented the ICE agent who shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minnesota in early January, said he supports deporting “the worst of the worst” from the state, but that Operation Metro Surge has “far exceeded its commitment to focus on threats to public safety” since it began in December.
“Americans, especially people of color, are living in fear. They carry documents proving their citizenship. That’s wrong. ICE is authorizing its agents to search homes using civil warrants that only require a Border Patrol agent’s signature. It’s unconstitutional and it’s wrong,” Madel said in the video.
Madel said the party has made it “nearly impossible” for Republicans like him to win statewide elections in Minnesota, even though the state’s Democratic Party is embroiled in a major corruption scandal.
Madel’s decision comes days after a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed Preti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, while filming an Operation Metro Surge patrol in Minneapolis on Saturday.
The shooting sparked a wave of outrage across the United States and raised questions about the response from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other senior White House officials.
Noem and her department, which oversees ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), immediately held Preti accountable after the shooting, with her accusing him of “brandishing” a weapon at Border Patrol agents and engaging in “domestic terrorism.”
Preti had a gun license and was armed at the time of the killing. Video evidence shows he was not holding a gun when he was shot. Instead, CBP officers are seen disarming Preeti before shooting her multiple times.
Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, told Al Jazeera that Noem and others broke with convention in the wake of the civilian shootings.
“The field director’s response was very aggressive and outlandish,” said Painter, who served as White House chief ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007 under President George W. Bush. “When you have a law enforcement officer shooting a civilian, you shouldn’t comment until the facts are known.”.
Noem’s comments and the narrative surrounding the shooting drew rare criticism from Republicans, some of whom took issue with Preti’s characterization of the gun at the scene.
Republicans such as Sens. Bill Cassidy and Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Thomas Massey, as well as traditionally conservative groups such as the National Rifle Association, have all pushed back, alluding to Mr. Preti’s right to bear arms under the U.S. Constitution.
“Legally possessing a firearm does not justify federal agents killing Americans, especially after the victim is disarmed, as the video footage shows,” Murkowski wrote to X.
Fellow Republican Sen. Thom Tillis also appeared to implicitly criticize Trump officials in “X,” writing that “government officials who rush to judgment and try to shut down investigations” do the president and the country a disservice.
Cassidy, Murkowski and Tillis are among a handful of Republicans in Congress who are calling for a thorough investigation into the Preti shooting.
David Smith, an expert on U.S. politics and foreign policy at the University of Sydney in Australia, told Al Jazeera that the silence elsewhere in the Republican Party also speaks volumes.
“The fact that most Republicans are really silent on this is in itself a very telling sign,” Smith said.
“Because of the fact that the Department of Homeland Security suggested that Alex Preti was a terrorist because he had a gun…many Republicans are very concerned about what pro-gun voters will think,” he said.
Smith said the fear extends beyond the gun control lobby to other sectors of the Republican Party concerned about government overreach.
“They are looking at situations in American cities where masked federal troops are armed with no accountability and use of violence in a manner that appears almost random,” he continued.
“This really looks like the government is throwing its weight in a direction that is dangerous to ordinary people.”
