# Peggy Flanagan **Peggy Flanagan** is the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota (since 2019, under Gov. [[Tim Walz]]) and the **2026 DFL nominee** for the open U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the retiring [[Tina Smith]]. She **won the August 11, 2026 DFL primary with roughly 58.7% to Rep. [[Angie Craig]]'s 39.7%** — a ~19-point win over a rival whose campaign and allied outside groups vastly outspent her — and faces Republican nominee [[Michele Tafoya]] on November 3. A member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, she would be the first Native American woman elected to the U.S. Senate. Endorsed by [[Bernie Sanders]] and [[Elizabeth Warren]]. ## 2026 Senate race See [[MN-Sen-2026]] for full race context. General election **November 3, 2026**; the seat is rated Likely Democratic. - **Primary result (Aug 11, 2026)**: **Won, ~58.7%** (~364,167 votes) to Craig's ~39.7% (~246,157), AP call. Craig conceded election night and endorsed her. - **What decided it**: fallout from the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Flanagan hammered Craig's 2025 vote expanding ICE authority; Craig's late expression of regret didn't recover her standing with the party's left, and she skipped the DFL endorsing convention that Flanagan won. - **Money**: ~$811K cash on hand in Q1 2026 against Craig's ~$3.8M. She was outspent and won anyway — the movement-over-money datapoint of the 2026 Senate primaries. - **General-election opponent**: [[Michele Tafoya]], who is running Minnesota's state-program fraud scandals directly at Flanagan as sitting Lt. Governor. ## Background A former state representative and longtime advocate for Native and children's policy; became the highest-ranking Native American woman in state executive office in the U.S. when elected Lt. Governor in 2018. Part of the Walz administration that drew national attention after Walz's 2024 vice-presidential run. ## Why she matters for the KB Flanagan's candidacy is both a historic-first story and a resolved test of whether an immigration-enforcement-resistance message mobilizes a primary electorate — it did, decisively. Her win over Craig is now the cleanest money-vs.-movement case study of the 2026 cycle, and her profile (Native woman, Walz-administration progressive) makes her a standing target of the right-wing media ecosystem the KB tracks. Expect the state-fraud attack line from [[Michele Tafoya]] to be amplified nationally through November. ## Related - [[MN-Sen-2026]] - [[Michele Tafoya]] - [[Angie Craig]] - [[Royce White]] - [[Tim Walz]] - [[Tina Smith]]