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Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan Wins the DFL Nomination for a Senate Seat

Her opponent, Representative Angie Craig, campaigned for the DFL nod for months, but declared she would no longer seek its endorsement two days before the party convention.

Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, who is running for the Democratic nomination for Senate, runs towards the stage after receiving the DFL endorsement during the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party Convention in Rochester on May 30, 2026.

Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan ran around the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party convention all day Saturday in a dark emerald-green suit, with matching Native-beaded earrings, trying to talk to everyone. Later that day, she won the DFL nomination by acclamation in her race to become the state’s next US senator, and the crowd roared.

But Flanagan is still facing an opponent in her August Democratic primary. Representative Angie Craig campaigned for the DFL nod for months, but two days before the party convened in Rochester, she declared that she would no longer seek the endorsement, and wouldn’t attend the convention.

Peggy Flanagan Is Running for the Senate to “Avenge Minnesota” Joan Walsh

Peggy Flanagan Is Running for the Senate to “Avenge Minnesota”

“It’s not really democracy when 1,200 people get to pick who our candidates are in America. It doesn’t allow every voice to be heard,” Craig said at a news conference Thursday, in front of a few dozen supporters.

“If you can’t show up and face your own party, then you’re not ready to face Republicans,” Flanagan countered in a video posted to social media.

This race isn’t over. Craig, a lesbian mother of four, has support from the state’s big LGBTQ groups, endorsements from many establishment Democrats and four times the funding of Flanagan right now (though the DFL endorsement will open party money and major campaign infrastructure resources for Flanagan). In 2018, Craig won a purple district on the outskirts of Minneapolis and she touts her centrist record as better preparation for a statewide race.

“Minnesotans have always proved that organized people can beat organized money,” Flanagan countered at the convention. “Senator Paul Wellstone was famously out-raised seven to one,” she reminded me Monday on the phone.

Heading into the weekend, local media reported that Flanagan could count on support from at least 75 percent of the convention delegates. In April her campaign told The Nation that she had won more DFL delegates than Craig in over 90 percent of the 117 local-unit........

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