ST PAUL, Minn. — Royce White, a conservative charismatic populist, will be the GOP's candidate to challenge U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar in November.
The Associated Press has projected White the winner in Tuesday's primary, setting up a showdown with Klobuchar, the Democratic incumbent who won easily in Tuesday's primary.
White will have an uphill battle if he's going to be the first Republican in Minnesota since 2006 to win a statewide race. White last reported raising $133,000, while Klobuchar has collected about $19 million this cycle and has more than $6 million available to spend on the general election campaign. She faced only nominal primary opposition.
White first came to prominence as a high school athlete when was named Minnesota's Mr. Basketball in 2009 during his senior year at Hopkins High School. He signed with the Minnesota Golden Gophers but was suspended during his freshman year after being hit with a misdemeanor shoplifting charge.
He left the program and two years later became a star power forward for the Iowa State Cyclones. The Houston Rockets drafted White in the first round in 2012, but his NBA career was cut short because the league couldn't make enough accommodations for his anxiety issues, which at times included a fear of flying.
White used the situation to call attention to the lack of policies in the NBA for dealing with mental health among players. He appeared on Dr. Phil's daytime show in 2013 to explain the anxiety he'd been struggling with since his teenage years, and his battle to play professional basketball.
White returned to the spotlight in 2020 when he led Black solidarity marches in the weeks and months after George Floyd was murdered. He also organized exhibition basketball tournaments in hopes of bringing communities together.
He attracted the attention of longtime Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon who was intrigued by the fact White's marches after George Floyd made stops at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve bank.
Two years later, White ran as a Republican for Congress in Minnesota's 5th District. He lost that race but continued to speak out against perceived threats to individual liberty from the government and global corporations.
White received a warm welcome from audience members at Former President Donald Trump's rally in St. Cloud July 27. When he posted a selfie from the event to social media, one of the comments was that all the Trump supporters posing with him are racists.
He responded to that on this "Please, Call Me Crazy" podcast.
"Those people in the arena Saturday up in St. Cloud at the Trump rally aren’t racist," White told the audience. "They just want to have a country. They just don’t want to have their country be run by liberals and communists, who say that a man can become a woman on any given day they choose."
White has warned against a "technocracy" and a "corporate-ocracy" in his speeches and his "Please, Call Me Crazy" podcast. His campaign ads warn of a vast conspiracy to turn Americans into serfs or slaves as part of a global economy.
"Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Finance all conspire with the federal government to suppress and omit certain information when they see fit," White tells viewers in the ad. "We are not slaves. We are not serfs. Our children are not sexual experiments. We cannot submit to being guinea pigs for mad scientists."
For complete results from Tuesday's primary, click here.
