Adam Schwarze built momentum with GOP activists. Now rivals are trying to stop him

MINNEAPOLIS - Adam Schwarze was adrift, sidelined from his role as a Navy SEAL after he was arrested on suspicion of violating Hawaii's COVID quarantine rules by visiting a grocery store in 2020. Back home in Minnesota, riots destroyed a Target near his sister's home after the murder of George Floyd.

"I'm pissed off; my career is over, and then my sister almost gets burned because [Gov. Tim] Walz gives up Minneapolis," Schwarze said in an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune.

The charges in Hawaii were eventually dismissed with prejudice, and his arrest expunged. It was then that Schwarze decided to run for political office, launching in Minnesota a 2022 bid for Congress that never got off the ground after a tussle over his job status with the Navy. Now, Schwarze is running for the U.S. Senate and gaining momentum.

He is largely unknown to the general public. A February poll of Minnesota Republican primary voters released by the campaign arm of Senate Republicans found nearly 60% had never heard of him.

Yet he's now a front-runner to win the Republican endorsement this weekend at the party's convention in Duluth, a remarkable development for a candidate facing two rivals with wider name recognition.

Schwarze has risen in the field by enmeshing himself with a small group of Republican activists who decide the GOP's endorsement, winning people over with an energetic speaking style and by lavishing attention on the party faithful and embracing President Donald Trump. He has won nearly all of the unofficial preference polls held by some local Republican organizations.

Other candidates are now scrambling to dent Schwarze's image, including former NFL sideline broadcaster Michele Tafoya and Royce White, the GOP's 2024 Senate nominee. The question is whether Schwarze can withstand a new barrage of criticism.

"Adam Schwarze donated to [2024 GOP presidential candidate] Nikki Haley's anti-Trump primary campaign and [Sen.] Amy Klobuchar," says an online ad from Tafoya's campaign. "He's not one of us. And now he wants Minnesota Republicans to trust him?"

Schwarze, 42, was born in St. Paul and adopted at 6 months old by a family in Bloomington. After a childhood dominated by hockey and other sports, he was in the process of enlisting in the Navy when al-Qaida attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.

He instead joined the Marines and was deployed to Iraq. In describing both the harrowing and mundane aspects of fighting the country's insurgents, Schwarze has recalled being up to his armpits in mud and dirt, and fighting in positions so crowded he was bumping into other Marines and "sometimes bodies and carnage."

Schwarze said his unit took heavy casualties in the fierce Battle of Najaf in 2004. His experiences have made him skeptical of the U.S. getting involved in foreign wars.

"I do think that Iraq was probably the worst, if not one of the worst, foreign policy decisions in my lifetime," Schwarze said in an interview.

The Star Tribune reviewed military separation papers provided by Schwarze. The documents from the Marine Corps and the Navy list medals that he received, including one denoting service in Iraq and another given to those who participated in "ground or surface combat."

After his time in Iraq, Schwarze guarded U.S. embassies around the world, and after earning a degree at the University of Minnesota, he joined the Navy SEALs, a prestigious special-operations force. Schwarze said he was deployed nine times in 70 countries during his career in the military.

That career took a turn in April 2020.

Schwarze said he was stationed at Pearl Harbor when the air conditioning went out at his houseboat in a military marina and he was given permission to travel to the Hawaiian island of Kauai to escape the heat.

At the time, Schwarze said, he was out of touch with how scared people were about COVID-19. While he was busy and insulated with his military work, Hawaiian residents had become wary of tourists spreading the virus.

At the time, Kauai required tourists to quarantine upon arrival on the island. But Schwarze told the Star Tribune he was exempt because of his work. When he and his now-fiancee went to the grocery store across the street from his rental, five police cars descended.

"They took me down like I was Al Capone," Schwarze said.

Though he came out on top in court, the episode cost him his assignments with the SEALs. Schwarze and the Navy later clashed over whether he could retire or resign from the service and run for office, a dispute that ended his 2022 run for the U.S. House in Minnesota's Third District before it began.

Politics were once far enough from Schwarze's mind that he remembers voting in only one election, 2024. He said casting a ballot was usually unrealistic as he prepared or carried out missions in faraway or hostile places.

"It's not like I'm in a military base in like, Italy, having … lattes and espressos," Schwarze said.

But after ending his career in the Navy, Schwarze entered the Senate race in February 2025.

Early on, he put soft distance between himself and the MAGA movement, even as he supported most of Trump's policies. In a 2025 interview with MinnPost, he pledged to "make politics boring again."

Since then, the Senate race has become crowded, and Schwarze has positioned himself somewhere between Tafoya's moderate positions and White's extremism.

He is closely embracing Trump, backing the president's economic policies, his immigration agenda and the war with Iran.

Typically, Schwarze begins his stump speech by emphasizing his Christianity, military service and "America First" beliefs. He says passing Trump's legislation to overhaul elections and require photo identification to vote is a top priority.

One key feature of Schwarze's campaign has been painting Tafoya as out of step with the party. He has criticized her as too liberal on guns and repeatedly condemned her views on abortion.

"We are going to take back our state, and we don't need to sacrifice our values to do so," Schwarze told a crowd in Albert Lea in April, describing Tafoya as "pro-abortion" without naming her.

Tafoya rejects that label. She has long described herself as an abortion rights supporter who backs access to the procedure up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. Although her stance may be a liability among Republican activists who largely oppose abortion, it could be a political asset in a general election: Minnesotans support some access to the procedure by wide margins.

In an interview, Schwarze criticized Minnesota Democrats for clearing away restrictions to abortion in the state. He said he would be a "champion for life" primarily by supporting expectant mothers and adoption services.

Unlike Tafoya, Schwarze declined to say how long into a pregnancy abortion should be legal, or whether it should be banned altogether. It's unclear whether his position is materially different from Tafoya's on how the law should treat the procedure, though he has criticized her abortion rights messaging, nevertheless.

"I'm smart," he said. "I'm running for U.S. Senate; I'm not going to do self-inflicted gunshot wounds to my messaging."

The combination of his political beliefs, energetic speaking style and military history has helped him gain traction in the race for the GOP nomination. Though polling by Tafoya allies shows Schwarze far behind her, his strategy is to first win the party endorsement, which primary voters in Minnesota typically follow.

It helps that his past attempt to run for the House and his early entry into the Senate race has given him access to local Republican events, making him a friendly and familiar face for the small group of people who will decide the endorsement. It also helps that he doesn't have another job: He is running for office full time.

"I met him about three years ago - he's been around," said Jim Schumann, a 71-year-old retired farmer from Eyota who said he also appreciated Schwarze's military service. "He's not afraid to articulate his positions and stick to them."

Schwarze has also pledged to drop out if delegates to this weekend's endorsement convention do not choose him. Tafoya has not.

The other GOP Senate candidates have taken notice of Schwarze's rise, and most have turned their attention on him in the past several weeks. Tafoya is running ads criticizing him, and others have attacked him in debates and on social media.

Several candidates have argued that Schwarze misrepresents his conservative credentials, in part because he donated $1,000 to Haley's presidential campaign and $10 to Klobuchar in 2019.

Schwarze said his now-fiancée cut the check to Haley and that it was reported as donations in each of their names. He also said a post listing him on the leadership team of Haley's campaign in Minnesota was made in error. He said he donated to Klobuchar only to monitor DFL political messaging.

Schwarze's rhetoric is animated, off-the-cuff and sometimes coarse. It appeals to many in the conservative base. Mark York, a Lake Wilson farmer also running for Senate, said during a GOP debate in St. Michael this month that Schwarze "does fire up conservatives" but doesn't appeal enough to independent voters.

York also accused him of being "against birth control," an attack stemming from a radio interview where Schwarze said society is becoming more "pacified" because women on birth control are more attracted to "betas." Schwarze added that if women are "natural, not on birth control, they're actually attracted to more alpha cavemen providers, protectors."

Schwarze said he supports access to birth control for women. He said the comment was intended to poke fun at Democrats who portray Republicans as "super pro masculinity" and pointed to research that found birth control reduces preference for men with masculine features.

"How I communicated those probably could have been better," he said.

Schwarze views the criticism as evidence that he's a top contender in the race. Heading into this weekend's endorsing convention, he has cast the nomination fight as a test of ideological purity, drawing a contrast between candidates willing to moderate positions on issues like abortion to appeal to a broader electorate and candidates like himself who are "uncompromising."

He argued delegates are more likely to reward conviction than pragmatism.

"When you sacrifice your moral integrity, you don't win the race," Schwarze said at the St. Michael debate. "You lose yourself and you lose the race."

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-Jp Lawrence of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.

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This story was originally published May 26, 2026 at 1:16 AM.