Let me tell you something. I’ve been in enough school board meetings and PTA fundraisers to know what it looks like when somebody tries to buy an election. It looks like what just happened in Minnesota.
Peggy Flanagan, the lieutenant governor, just won the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate by what they’re calling an “overwhelming margin.” She beat Rep. Angie Craig. And she beat the more than $20 million that outside groups poured into that race to prop Craig up. Twenty. Million. Dollars. I don’t know about you, but I can’t even get the school district to fix a leaky roof for $40,000, and these people are dropping $20 million on a single primary like it’s Monopoly money.
Here’s where it gets good. A big chunk of that cash came from something called North Star Dawn PAC, which is funded by the Civic Progress Fund Inc., a group that, and I want you to really sit with this, does not disclose its donors. So some shadowy organization with a name that sounds like it was generated by a focus group dumped millions into a Senate race and nobody is allowed to know who’s behind it. But sure, let’s keep pretending this is a democracy.
Office of Governor Tim Walz & Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsCraig, by the way, is a “centrist Democrat and crypto industry champion.” Of course she is. Because nothing says “I’m fighting for working families” quite like carrying water for an industry that evaporates people’s life savings every eight months. I’ve got four kids and a grocery budget that looks like a war crime, and some crypto-backed politician wants to lecture me about fiscal responsibility? Please.
Flanagan ran on Medicare for All, expanding Social Security, universal childcare, raising the wage, and dismantling ICE after federal agents killed two people in Minnesota this year. She got endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Tina Smith, whose seat she’s actually running to fill. And she won. Not with dark money. Not with some billionaire’s Super PAC. She won because actual human beings showed up and voted.
“For months now, I have been telling you that this campaign was about the many vs. the money,” Flanagan said in her victory speech. “Well, guess what? The many just won.”
US House of Representatives (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsI’ll be honest. I don’t trust politicians as a rule. I’ve been burned too many times. But when somebody looks at $20 million in anonymous attack ads and says “no thank you” and still wins? That gets my attention. That tells me the system isn’t completely broken yet.
Now here’s the part where I need you to stay with me, because November is coming and it’s going to be ugly. Flanagan’s opponent is Michele Tafoya, a sports reporter turned Republican Senate candidate who apparently told Americans to “take one less trip to Starbucks” and endure the economic pain of Donald Trump’s Iran war with, and I am not making this up, “a stiff upper lip.” A stiff upper lip. Ma’am, my gas bill went up 30 percent and my 12-year-old needs braces. I don’t need a stiff upper lip. I need a senator who isn’t cosplaying as a British butler while the economy burns.
Richard Carlbom, who chairs Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, put it perfectly: Tafoya’s agenda “consists only of saying yes to Donald Trump and yes to higher costs for working people.” That’s it. That’s the whole platform. Say yes to Trump, tell moms to skip lattes, and pretend the tariff fairy will fix everything.
Stephen Leonardi / PexelsMinnesota just proved something I’ve been saying for years. When regular people actually show up, the money doesn’t matter. Twenty million dollars couldn’t buy that seat. Now let’s see if they can do it again in November, because the same people who lost this round are going to come back with twice as much cash and twice as many lies.
I did my own research. And what I found is that Minnesota isn’t for sale. The rest of us should take notes.