WASHINGTON — The State Fair is the unofficial start of campaign season, so Rep. Angie Craig and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan are getting serious in their fight to be the one who runs under the DFL Party banner for retiring Sen. Tina Smith’s seat.
Both candidates — veteran officeholders with impressive credentials — are well positioned to succeed Smith as Republicans are considered the underdogs in this contest. But first, they must battle each other for the support of Democratic voters in the state in what is expected to be a very costly and bruising primary fight.
The contest has been fairly subdued as both candidates have been focusing on raising campaign cash and establishing networks of support. But things are going to be noisier.
Craig, D-2nd District, has during her six years in the U.S. House turned a “purple district” into a reliably Democratic stronghold. To help keep the district in Democratic hands, Craig highlighted her moderate stance and distanced herself from her party’s stance on policing, which sought reforms to curb abuses.
Craig, 53, instead sponsored bills that would provide police forces more money and support. And in January, before Smith announced her retirement and the prospect of a Senate seat was in the offing, Craig voted for the first GOP bill put to a vote in the U.S. House this year.
That was the controversial Laken Riley Act, named after a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant in Georgia. The bill, now law, directs federal authorities to detain and deport immigrants who are accused — not yet convicted — of specific crimes if they are in the country illegally.
Those breaks with her party, although infrequent, could prove a liability with left-leaning activists who are likely to back true progressive Flanagan at next year’s DFL nominating convention.
But Craig said she’s not worried, pointing out that Gov. Tim Walz and his running mate Flanagan failed to win the DFL endorsement, as did former Gov. Mark Dayton.
Craig said she’s going to compete for the endorsement, but will continue her campaign for the U.S. Senate if she fails to win it. “I feel very optimistic that I will be at the finish line to take on the Republicans,” she said.
She also said she is “committed to give all DFLers a chance to have a vote” on her candidacy in next August’s Democratic primary.
Needing the support of left-leaning Democratic voters, Craig is fashioning herself as a maverick who “raised hell” in the U.S. House and will challenge the decorum of the U.S. Senate.
“You can’t get anywhere in Washington unless you shake things up,” she said.
She also said she’s a “battle-tested candidate” who has faced tough — and very well-funded — Republican challengers to keep the 2nd Congressional District in Democratic hands.
There are two major declared GOP candidates in the race, former NBA player Royce White and Adam Schwarze, a former Navy SEAL. Unlike the Democrats vying for Smith’s seat, neither Republican candidate has held political office before.
“We have it as ‘Leans Democratic,’ but the Democratic field seems pretty clearly stronger than the Republican field,” said Kyle Kondik of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Kondik also said Craig has more experience running competitive races in a competitive congressional district “and she's more in the mold of the kind of candidate national Democrats tend to prefer in statewide races.”
“That said, in the context of 2026, I think either would be favored in a general election,” he said.
A fight for DFL endorsement
Flanagan, meanwhile, is supported by well-known progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. — who appeared with Flanagan at the State Fair over the weekend — and dependent on left-leaning grass roots. Yet, like Craig, the lieutenant governor is trying to avoid political labeling.
“I consider myself more than anything to be pragmatic,” she said. “Most Minnesotans care about each other and getting things done.”
Yet, like Warren, Flanagan is an economic populist, saying the average American stands no chance in a system that favors the wealthy. “People think the economy is rigged right now,” she said. “It’s all of us versus the billionaires.”
Unlike Craig, who is well known in her congressional district but less known in the rest of Minnesota, Flanagan, 45, has campaigned state-wide and been endorsed by state officials, including Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, state lawmakers and county commissioners.
“I believe I’m going to get the DFL endorsement,” she said.
Flanagan is also confident she can run a successful general election campaign, which would require support of moderate Democrats and independents in a state that is “blue,” but one in which Kamala Harris defeated Donald Trump by only about 4 percentage points.
She said she expects the support of “a lot of DFLers, but also a lot of people who are really freaked out about what’s happening in this country.”
In a dig at Craig, Flanagan said, “I am not of Washington; I am of Minnesota.”
And she also pointed out that Smith served as lieutenant governor before she served in the U.S. Senate. But Smith was appointed to that seat after former Sen. Al Franken resigned — she did not win it through an election.
David Schultz, political science professor at Hamline University, said that although Flanagan ran statewide, it was Walz who carried the load as far as campaigning. “There is very little evidence that a lieutenant governor makes a difference on a ticket,” Schultz said. “Voters were voting for Walz.”
Schultz also said it’s common for the candidate who does not receive the party’s nomination to win political office. “More often than not, in the last 20 years the convention-endorsed candidate does not win the primary,” he said.
He also said Craig could claim success if she manages to keep Flanagan from winning the necessary support — 60% — of the delegates to snare the DFL endorsement.
Hardscrabble childhoods
There may not be a lot of light between the messaging of the Democratic rivals as they start their campaigns in earnest soon.
Both will attack Trump and GOP policies, especially the “big beautiful” bill that cuts social safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps and ends clean energy tax breaks.
And both candidates will make the economy, which appears to be weakening, a focus of their campaigns.
Craig said she has traveled across Minnesota to introduce herself to the suburbs, cities and rural areas and has hit the “picnic circuit” all summer. “What (voters) are telling me is that they have a sense of economic anxiety,” she said.
Besides similar messaging on the campaign trail, Craig and Flanagan share something else — a hardscrabble childhood and ambitions and skills that led them to successful political careers.
They’ve also broken barriers, Craig as the first LGTBQ member of Congress from Minnesota and Flanagan as the first Native American Senate candidate from Minnesota.
Both women were raised by single mothers who depended on the social safety net.
Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Nation, still lives in the Twin Cities suburb she grew up in, St. Louis Park, with her mother. She said that she suffered from severe asthma as a child and depended on Medicaid for medical help.
Flanagan also said food stamps helped put food on the table at her home and that she is running for the Senate “because growing up I felt that the bottom could fall out at any minute.”
Craig grew up in a trailer park in Arkansas and worked her way through college.
She found success — and affluence — in the business world as an executive at a medical device company.
Meanwhile, Flanagan has made her mark in the political world and as an advocate, serving in the state House and as executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund-Minnesota.
With the U.S. Senate in play in next year’s midterm elections, whether Flanagan or Craig are on the general election ballot may not matter to national Democrats. They are likely to step in to help either candidate in a race that is estimated to cost at least $40 million.
This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.