ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota may have a reputation for friendliness, but that spirit is nowhere to be found in the state’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary contest.
The two frontrunners — U.S. Rep. Angie Craig and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan — have been at each other’s throats over questions of electability, connections to corporate money, and how aggressively each would challenge President Donald Trump’s administration in Washington. The race has drawn millions of dollars in political advertising and has come to symbolize a much larger fault line running through the Democratic Party.
This increasingly contentious matchup is one of several upcoming contests pitting progressive Democrats against more centrist opponents. August primaries in Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin will serve as another barometer of how fed up Democratic voters are with the party establishment. The results across the Upper Midwest could also test whether hard-left candidates can win outside of their traditional strongholds.
Following a string of notable progressive wins earlier this year, Democratic Party leaders are expressing concern that insurgent candidates could hurt the party’s image and jeopardize its chances of winning back either chamber of Congress this fall — or holding onto a governor’s seat in a key battleground state before the 2028 presidential race. Progressive advocates, meanwhile, insist that recent election results validate their approach as the party’s best way forward.
Flanagan, who has earned the backing of progressive Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, held a press conference last week to call out what she described as “secretive dark money groups and special interests” that she claims are operating in the Minnesota race to benefit Craig, a more traditional Democrat who has the support of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York and other senior party figures.
“What we are facing right now in our party,” Flanagan told The Associated Press, “is the very folks who are standing in the way of the things that people need to be able to afford their lives, who are Democrats, are funded by these corporate special interests. That is the choice I think that we have, and people are onto it.”
Craig has fired back, pointing out that Flanagan raised campaign money from major corporations while she was chair of the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association. Craig also argues that if Flanagan wins the nomination, Republicans would hammer her over her connection to an active fraud investigation into the state’s Medicaid programs.
“The coalition we’re building is people in Minnesota who understand that in order to stop Donald Trump, we’ve got to win elections,” Craig told the AP. She cautioned that Minnesota is frequently underestimated as “the very definition of a swing state, and we simply can’t take this U.S. Senate seat for granted.”
Craig defended accepting corporate donations, arguing that Democrats cannot unilaterally disarm while Republicans continue drawing heavily from wealthy contributors. She said she supports sweeping campaign finance reform to limit the influence of money in politics — but added a caveat.
“But until we get to that day, it’s naive to think that we’re not going to need resources,” Craig said.
The Minnesota primary, where both Craig and Flanagan are competing for the seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Tina Smith, is scheduled for Aug. 11. Wisconsin will also hold its primary that same day, one week after Michigan voters pick their nominees on Aug. 4.
In Michigan, Rep. Haley Stevens is squaring off against progressive Abdul El-Sayed for the Democratic Senate nomination in a race the party must win to keep the seat held by retiring Sen. Gary Peters, who has thrown his support behind Stevens. Meanwhile in Wisconsin, democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong has gained significant momentum in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, challenging more conventional candidates including former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and current Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez.
In each contest, progressive forces are hoping to demonstrate that an economically populist message can resonate with voters beyond the deeply liberal urban areas where they’ve recently found success, such as New York City and Denver. Democratic leaders, however, fear that these insurgent candidates risk throwing away winnable races with messages that many voters may see as too extreme.
Craig also took aim at progressives for what she called reckless gambles with Democrats’ Senate prospects due to weak candidate vetting. She pointed to the recent collapse of Graham Platner’s campaign — Platner had easily captured the Democratic Senate nomination in Maine in June but stepped away from the race last week following a sexual assault allegation, which he denies.
“We just saw one of our best Senate opportunities go down in flames in Maine, potentially, with that same coalition,” Craig said.
“And many of the same people are working on the lieutenant governor’s campaign as Graham Platner’s campaign,” Craig continued. “My coalition is statewide. I’m going everywhere. I’m talking to everyone. I’m working to bring people back to the (Democratic Party).”
In the wake of the Platner fallout, progressives are treating the Upper Midwest Senate races as a critical opportunity to influence the makeup of the Democrats’ Senate caucus and validate their electoral strategy heading into the midterms.
“Abdul El-Sayed was already the most important primary candidate in the nation, and this underscores the importance of that race, both in the primary and the general,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a political action committee supporting both Flanagan and El-Sayed.
The organization sees this year’s Senate contests in Michigan and Maine as crucial tests of whether progressive messaging and organizing can hold up in genuinely competitive races — a key question as the party looks ahead to its 2028 presidential primary.
“Our hope is to not have an outlier but a pattern of shake-up-the-system economic fighters who win tough swing state elections,” Green said.
The Upper Midwest has a long tradition of populism stretching back decades, having produced both progressive and conservative populist figures, according to Steven Schier, a political science professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. The region was historically a model for reform-minded policies during the Progressive Era, but it also sent some of the most fiercely conservative Cold War voices to Washington, including Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin.
“What’s interesting about the Upper Midwest is that you get well-developed and articulated left populism, and well-developed and articulated right populism in competition and combat. It produces some very lively election seasons,” Schier said.
In more recent years, the Great Lakes region has emerged as the nation’s premier political battleground, with state legislatures and presidential outcomes alternating between the two parties over the past decade. Regardless of who ultimately wins, the results of these midterm primaries will send shockwaves through national politics.
“This culture will take broad concerns that populists bring up and trumpet them throughout the electoral system, and that’s true on both the right and the left up here,” Schier said.
