Native Vote. The divide among Democrats this year is as much attitudinal as it is ideological.
Rank-and-file Democrats are thirsting for leaders who will fight rather than fold in the face of the Trump administration’s unprecedented power grabs.
[Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the Minnesota Reformer. Used with permission. All rights reserved.]
Annie Wells, whose crop art recreation of Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s Senate campaign poster hung in the State Fair Agriculture Horticulture building, doesn’t want a candidate who tries to meet Republicans in the middle.
“She’s one of the Democrats that’s actually trying to stand up and do things,” Wells said. “I’m frustrated with a lot of the Democrats that are not being bold enough in response to what’s happening at the federal level.”
If there’s one thing Flanagan’s campaign wants Democratic voters to know, it’s which side of the fight/fold divide she’s on.
“Peggy is the most dedicated fighter for kids in America, y’all,” Attorney General Keith Ellison said at a packed rally in Minneapolis Friday night.
“I’m here to fight for a woman who has the courage to fight for all of us,” said U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
Democrats across the country continue to grapple with what went wrong in 2024 — when Flanagan’s governing partner, Gov. Tim Walz, was on the national ticket — and how to win voters back in 2026.
For Flanagan, it starts with a fighting stance.
“I know resiliency, and survival, and fight, and overcoming challenges and any obstacle that people put in our way,” she said.
Flanagan’s opponent in the Democratic primary is U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, a moderate who has represented the south metro in Congress since 2019. As Flanagan courts the party’s progressive grassroots, Craig has long appealed to centrist suburban and rural voters, emphasizing her record supporting law enforcement, border security, agriculture and collaboration across the aisle.
After years spent cultivating that political persona, Craig has pumped up her anti-Trump rhetoric since launching her first statewide campaign. In an April video announcing her Senate run, Craig called out Trump for the “chaos and corruption coming out of Washington, crashing down on all of us, every day,” and “a president trampling our rights and freedoms, as he profits for personal gain.”
Still, listen to how Flanagan recently framed her campaign against Craig — in classic Midwestern style, without naming or directly attacking Craig — in front of more than 1,000 supporters at at a brewery in northeast Minneapolis: “Will we send Washington the same old people and the same old solutions — or will we be bolder and fight harder and get more done for people?”
A ‘lived experience’ candidate
Flanagan is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation and the daughter of Anishinaabe activist Marvin Manypenny, a fierce advocate for tribal sovereignty. If elected, she will be the first Native woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
She was raised by her mother in St. Louis Park, where they relied on public assistance to survive. In speeches, Flanagan tells stories of walking home from the food shelf, cradling government surplus cheese under her arm like a football; holding a different-colored lunch ticket to indicate that she qualified for free or reduced-cost lunch; relying on Medicaid for health care and Section 8 vouchers for housing.
“If we had more people serving in the U.S. Senate who relied on SNAP for nutrition and who relied on Medicaid for their health care, we probably wouldn’t have passed this big, ugly bill,” Flanagan said, referring to the GOP mega-law Trump signed on July 4.
After working on the late Sen. Paul Wellstone’s campaign in 2002, Flanagan won her first election in 2004, when she became the Minneapolis School Board’s youngest member at age 25.
She became the director of the Native American Leadership Program at Wellstone Action, an academy started by the Wellstone family after the senator’s death. The organization trained influential Minnesota Democrats including Walz and Ellison.
Flanagan met Walz at a three-day “Camp Wellstone” and knocked doors for his first campaign in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District. (Walz won that race and the following five.)
As executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund of Minnesota, she co-chaired a coalition pushing to raise Minnesota’s minimum wage. The coalition scored a major win in 2014 when the DFL-controlled Legislature raised the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2016, and adjusted for inflation after.
Flanagan won a seat in the state House in 2015, representing the west metro district that includes her hometown of St. Louis Park.
Walz selected Flanagan as his running mate in 2017. She was an olive branch to the left wing of the DFL and a counterweight to Walz’s perceived centrist leanings — he’d represented a purple (now red) district in Congress for more than a decade and had an A rating from the NRA.
Walz and Flanagan both claim credit to the slate of DFL priorities passed in the 2023 legislative session: paid family and medical leave, free school meals, and universal background checks for gun purchases, among others.
The almost-governor
The day Vice President Kamala Harris selected Walz to join her on the Democratic ticket for the highest executive offices in the nation, Flanagan’s life changed, too.
This time last year, Flanagan was sampling the new State Fair foods with chef Andrew Zimmern and serving all-you-can-drink milk.
Behind the scenes, she was preparing to ascend to the governor’s office, meeting with donors and prospective staffers. In public, she campaigned for Walz and Harris at 77 stops in 90 days. She stepped into the national spotlight as the successor to Walz, pending his and Harris’ victory; Politico profiled her, and top party leaders asked her to speak on day one of the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
But when Harris and Walz lost, Flanagan’s shortcut to the governor’s office abruptly closed.
Walz returned to Minnesota and stepped back from public life for a couple of months. Flanagan, for her part, returned to the stream of appearances that define the public role of lieutenant governor: packing meals at food shelves; gaveling in the state Senate; meeting with the Future Farmers of America and small business owners and social workers and labor unions and community college students.
After nearly a decade joined at the hip, Walz and Flanagan stopped appearing together in public. Flanagan wasn’t in attendance at Walz’s homecoming speech or routine events she had attended in the past.
Walz administration officials, granted anonymity by the Star Tribune, said in December that Walz wasn’t happy with the steps Flanagan took to prepare for governorship, including planning for a potential run in 2026 and tapping into Walz’s campaign funds without authorization for some campaign work. (Walz publicly downplayed the division and praised Flanagan; Flanagan never commented publicly on the rift, and says she’ll support Walz with his next steps.)
And then, in February, U.S. Sen. Tina Smith announced she won’t seek re-election in 2026, creating an opportunity for Flanagan to set out on her own.
Flanagan’s role in the frenzied 2024 campaign was to support Walz and Harris; but it also formed the foundation for a future statewide run.
“I do think it was an opportunity for me to get to know more Minnesotans to get to know folks nationwide,” Flanagan told the Reformer.
Walz has not yet announced whether he will run for a third term. Flanagan’s Senate bid means he would have to find a new running mate.
Despite the political separation from Walz, Flanagan will be forced to defend their shared record and — not unlike Harris with Joe Biden — decide when to publicly break from the administration she has served. From flagging school test scores to a looming budget deficit, fraud in public programs to population stagnation, Republicans — and Craig, depending on how she wants to run her campaign — will have fodder.
Eschewing corporate money
Standing in the way of Flanagan’s aspirations are a primary election, a general election and a president with a firm grasp on Congress and the courts.
Trump and Republicans have “ransacked our government” and are “spitting in the faces of millions of people” who stand to lose health care or food assistance, Flanagan said at the recent rally with Warren.
Flanagan also lobbed attacks at corporations and big-money politics.
Voters need to elect people who “have the guts to fight against these powerful corporate interests who are pulling the strings these days,” Flanagan said.
Flanagan has promised not to accept donations from corporate political action committees.
By the end of June, she had raised nearly $1.4 million, with most of the money coming from individual donations of $200 or less.
Many of the largest donations — most in the amount of $3,500 — were from tribal nations from around the country.
Standing on a platform surrounded by Democratic-Farmer-Labor voters at the party’s state fair tent, Flanagan introduced herself in Ojibwe, as she does in most public appearances. Then she switched to English:
“My name is Peggy Flanagan. My Ojibwe name is ‘speaks in a loud and clear voice woman.’ How am I doing?”
About the Author: “Levi \”Calm Before the Storm\” Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) is the founder, publisher and editor of Native News Online. Rickert was awarded Best Column 2021 Native Media Award for the print\/online category by the Native American Journalists Association. He serves on the advisory board of the Multicultural Media Correspondents Association. He can be reached at levi@nativenewsonline.net.”
Contact: levi@nativenewsonline.net