Angie Craig built her career winning over swing voters. Now she has to win over Democrats

MINNEAPOLIS - Angie Craig has been working Democrats across Minnesota lately, trying to convince them she's as good a U.S. Senate candidate as they thought she was a year ago.

A recent day started at a Speedway gas station in Newport, where she filmed a video blasting Republicans for rising fuel prices. From there, she headed to a law enforcement and first responder training center in Inver Grove Heights to promote her bill targeting health insurers with high denial rates.

Then she was off to Woodbury to celebrate a new public safety facility she supported in Congress, before driving an hour north to Chisago to rally with striking county workers demanding better health care coverage.

At nearly every stop, the four-term congresswoman told some version of the same story: that she understands working-class struggles because she lived them.

"I helped raise my brother and my sister while my mom was off working," Craig tells union members striking outside of the Chisago County government office. "So when you talk about the middle class and working class in this country, I've lived it."

The message is as much about electability as biography. Craig wants Democrats to see her as a battle-tested pragmatist: progressive enough for the party base, but moderate enough to win swing voters who have drifted away from Democrats nationally.

A year ago, that profile helped vault Craig into apparent front-runner status when she jumped into the race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, a position buoyed by strong fundraising, support from establishment Democrats and a reputation for winning difficult races.

But now, as she heads into this weekend's state Democratic Party endorsing convention, Craig finds herself in a far more volatile political fight, facing off against Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in one of the most competitive Senate primaries in the country.

Though the race has often reflected the national debate about the direction of the Democratic Party, it has also been buffeted by a very specific local issue: the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in Minnesota, Operation Metro Surge, which sparked outrage across the state and intensified demands from Democratic voters for elected officials to more aggressively confront the administration, particularly after two Minnesotans were fatally shot by federal agents.

Flanagan has seized on Craig's 2025 vote for the Laken Riley Act - legislation allowing undocumented immigrants arrested for certain nonviolent crimes to be detained by federal authorities - as a central line of attack heading into this weekend's party endorsing conventions.

By doing so, the lieutenant governor has consolidated the progressive base behind her, giving her momentum heading into what will be the first major test of the race. Flanagan claims she now has the delegates needed to win the endorsement, but Craig is unfazed, noting she's been planning from the beginning to move on to the DFL's primary election in August.

"I've said from day one that the U.S. Senate race for Democrats would be decided on August 11," Craig said.

In an interview at the Second District convention in Burnsville, where delegates gathered to choose an endorsed candidate to succeed her in Congress, Craig acknowledged the challenge of a competitive Democratic primary between two well-liked candidates.

"At the end of the day, a family fight is always harder," Craig said. "You've got to make the case for why you are the one that they want to choose."

Craig says the hardest part of the race has been campaigning statewide while still serving full-time in Congress - flying back and forth from Washington for votes before cramming in long days of campaign stops across Minnesota as Flanagan works in the state full-time.

She ended her marathon day on the campaign trail at Malcolm Yards in Minneapolis, where supporters gathered to mark her first year in the Senate race.

For voters still getting to know her, Craig leans heavily on the personal story that has long defined her political brand: being raised by a single mother in a mobile home park, fighting for the right to adopt her son as a lesbian mother and then repeatedly winning one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country.

"I had to fight for the right to just be taken seriously," Craig tells supporters at the rally. "The Democratic establishment in Washington, they had their own preferred candidate. Republicans had held the Second District for three quarters of a century. No one, and I mean no one, thought a lesbian mother of four was a good fit for the Second District of Minnesota."

In Congress, Craig carved out a reputation as a moderate Democrat willing to work across the aisle and embrace law enforcement, even earning endorsements from the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association during several reelection campaigns. That profile helped her win reelection in 2024 by more than 13 percentage points - her largest margin yet - in a district long viewed as Minnesota's most competitive political battleground.

It's a contrast Craig draws repeatedly with Flanagan, who has only run one race on her own against a Republican, in 2016, when she easily won a seat in the Minnesota House in a blue district.

"I'm the experienced fighter that you want in the arena at this moment in time against this administration, someone who can bring people back to the DFL that we've lost," Craig said in an interview. "I've proven that I can do that in my congressional district. I'll prove it statewide as well."

Flanagan's attacks on Craig's immigration vote at a time when some Minnesotans are still reeling from the effects of Operation Metro Surge have cost her some endorsements and support from rank-and-file Democrats.

In addition to the 2025 Laken Riley Act, Craig also voted on a resolution that year that condemned antisemitism while expressing appreciation to law enforcement officers, including ICE personnel. Craig was the only Democrat in Minnesota's delegation to support it, stating her vote was primarily driven by her opposition to antisemitism.

"Votes are real things, and they have real consequences," said Chuck Smith-Dewey of Lakeville, a longtime supporter of Craig for Congress who's now supporting Flanagan. "That Laken Riley vote had a real consequence. The vote she took expressing gratitude to ICE had a real consequence. We lived through that in Minnesota. Two people died."

The Laken Riley Act is also what made Sahro Abdullahi of Savage, a Somali American Minnesotan who's supported Craig in the past, lean toward supporting Flanagan in the Senate race. As Operation Metro Surge came to an end, Craig expressed her regret for the vote, but Abdullahi thinks it came "too late."

"That kind of hurt her chances with a lot of immigrant people," Abdullahi said of Craig's vote.

Craig said her message to voters upset with her vote is a vow to "spend the rest of my political career and life working to try to accomplish comprehensive immigration reform in our community."

Others are standing by Craig despite the attacks. They think she's being treated unfairly, and that the base is forgetting the work she did to keep the state's most competitive House seat blue. Unlike Flanagan, who has not had to cast a vote since she served in the Minnesota statehouse, Craig has continued to cast votes in Congress over the years.

"She turned my congressional district blue and kept it blue," Aaron Wershow of Rosemont said at her campaign event in Minneapolis. "That's kind of to me one of the most important things."

Mounds View City Council Member Sherry Gunn, who also attended Craig's rally, thinks the congresswoman is being "bullied" for her vote and commends her for walking it back.

"I personally have made decisions where, when it came time for the council meetings, I have backed out, I have changed my mind, and that's what I think is good government," Gunn said.

Heading into Saturday's endorsement fight, Craig is quick to note that prominent Democrats - including Gov. Tim Walz - have lost the party endorsement and still gone on to win the primary. And some political observers say an endorsement loss would hardly be the end for Craig, who has outraised Flanagan and built a campaign geared as much toward August primary voters as convention delegates.

"I think it's much more important for Peggy Flanagan to win the endorsement and therefore get the resources of the state party going into the primary than it is for Angie Craig," said DFL political operative Todd Rapp.

"In a way, you can say Craig's going to get two cracks at this, the convention and the primary, but Flanagan really has no choice but to win both of those," Rapp added.

Craig and Republicans alike have tried to make Minnesota's sprawling fraud scandals a central liability for Flanagan, arguing that as lieutenant governor she shares responsibility for the administration's failures. Craig has warned that if Flanagan becomes the nominee, Republicans will seize on the issue and make it the defining attack of the general election.

It's a view shared by Republicans, who see Flanagan as the preferred candidate to run against.

"She's loudly liberal on every issue, and I think just seen as out of the mainstream," former GOP gubernatorial candidate Marty Seifert said of Flanagan.

In the lead-up to the convention, Craig is already shifting her message to talk directly to August primary voters. She wants them to remember she's the only candidate who's "battle tested" in the race.

"The only way we stop Donald Trump is by winning elections and by taking majorities," Craig said. "And I am 100% confident that I can hold the Senate seat for us."

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(Allison Kite of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.)

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This story was originally published May 28, 2026 at 4:19 AM.