Funny how money works in politics. Angie Craig raised $12.7 million. Outside groups dumped another $20 million on her head. That is $33 million to buy a Senate seat, and Minnesota Democrats looked at that pile of cash and said no thank you. Peggy Flanagan raised half what Craig did and beat her by nearly 20 points. Ask yourself who benefits when the candidate with three times the money loses by 131,000 votes. The people who tell you elections are bought and paid for are the same ones doing the buying, and they just got their wallets handed to them.
Craig had the whole machine behind her. Human Rights Campaign. Equality PAC. Pete Buttigieg. Tammy Baldwin. Jim Obergefell. Every single institutional heavyweight the Democratic Party could muster, lined up in a row, and the voters walked right past them. The Christopher Street Project, a group nobody had heard of six months ago, endorsed Flanagan because Craig could not be bothered to co-sponsor the Trans Bill of Rights. That is the detail that tells you everything. Craig wanted to have it both ways, hedge on the controversial stuff, keep the corporate donors happy. Flanagan said what she believed and dared anyone to disagree.
“If you don’t stand up for the things that you claim to believe in, then I don’t know that you really believe in those things.” That is Flanagan talking to The Advocate. Plain. No consultant fingerprints on it. When was the last time you heard a politician say something that did not sound like it came out of a focus group?
US House of Representatives (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsHere is where the dots start connecting. Tim Walz, Flanagan’s own running mate of eight years, did not endorse her. His wife Gwen endorsed Craig. Think about that. The woman who served beside Walz for two terms, and he sat on his hands. Walz already dropped his bid for a third term because of that social service fraud scandal, the one where fraudsters raided state programs on their watch. Flanagan’s answer to questions about it? “The governor has said that the buck stops with him.” Convenient. The establishment closes ranks when the heat is on, and everybody in the inner circle knows who gets left holding the bag.
But the voters did not care about the insider choreography. A 64-year-old hardwood floor installer named Carson Medcalf voted in a primary for the first time in his life because his wife is a Vietnamese immigrant and they spent the winter terrified. He liked Craig but could not stomach her vote for the Laken Riley Act. That is a real person making a real decision, and no amount of TV ads overrides it.
Flanagan stood on stage at First Avenue in Minneapolis and said, “Minnesota is not for sale.” The crowd roared. Whether that holds up in November against Michele Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter the Republicans think is their best shot in two decades, is another question entirely. Tafoya is already pitching herself as “common sense versus crazy.” That is a focus-group line if I ever heard one, but it plays in a purplish state.
Flanagan would be the first Native American woman in the Senate. Her Ojibwe name means “speaks in a loud and clear voice woman.” The establishment spent $33 million to silence that voice and failed. Whether she is the real deal or just the next politician who learns to whisper once she gets to Washington, that we will find out. But for one night, the money lost. Savor it. It does not happen often.