His Twitter profile refers to him as “The Future Governor of Minnesota.” But, it is now known that this proclamation will not reflect the 2022 race for the state’s highest office.
Cory Hepola, the former KARE-11 news anchor and WCCO-AM in Minneapolis-St. Paul on-air host, has suspended his third-party campaign and is no longer a candidate.
Hepola stepped away from WCCO Radio, an Audacy station, on February 8 as he considered a run for governor of Minnesota. He hosted the 9am-Noon CT slot on the News/Talk station.
On Twitter, he said at the time, “WCCO Radio changed my life. And, I knew from the start it would, because I knew from the start what a responsibility it is to hold that mic … I leave the iconic station with a grateful heart.”
In the late 2010s, Hepola was highly regarded as a news anchor at TEGNA-owned NBC affiliate KARE-11. He exited in 2019 after four years to succeed the retiring John Hines at WCCO Radio.
As Radio Ink reported in early March, Hepola made it official by taking to Twitter to announce that he would run for Governor of Minnesota. He became a candidate for the Forward Party of Minnesota.
But, on Tuesday (5/31), that came to a halt. With a filing deadline approaching, Hepola commented that the Forward Party simply lacked the strength to break through the “polarization driven by the Democratic and Republican parties.”
Thus, Hepola chose not to file for governor of Minnesota. “However, I will continue to promote and build support for the bold, new ideas on which my campaign was built and to create the political vehicle that can transform proposals to policy,” he said.
Could this open the door to his WCCO return? That’s likely a question many inside and outside Audacy’s Twin Cities operations are now asking.
From October 2012-October 2014, Hepola was a sports anchor for Comcast SportsNet in Houston. Prior to that, he was a sports anchor for KVUE-TV in Austin and, before that, at WROC-TV in Rochester, Minn. He began his career in 2002 as the sports anchor for KXJB-TV in Fargo, N.D., and later worked at KTVH-TV in Helena, Mont., and at WENY-TV in Corning-Elmira, N.Y.
