ELECTION UPSET – CHUCK SCHUMER GETS CRUSHED
Flanagan Wins Minnesota Senate Primary on an Anti-ICE Message - But Republicans Still Have to Prove Tafoya Can Turn the Seat Red
Peggy Flanagan did more than survive Minnesota's Democratic Senate primary.
She won it decisively, defeating U.S. Rep. Angie Craig by nearly 20 percentage points and giving the party's progressive wing one of its clearest victories of the 2026 primary season.
Minnesota's current unofficial statewide results show Flanagan with 411,541 votes, or 59.02 percent, to Craig's 274,641 votes, or 39.38 percent.
The remaining Democratic candidates combined for less than 2 percent.
Those results are still technically unofficial until the Minnesota State Canvassing Board meets on Aug. 18.
But the margin is far too large for the nomination itself to be in doubt.
Flanagan will move into the Nov. 3 general election against Republican nominee Michele Tafoya, the former NFL sideline reporter who won the GOP primary with 211,667 votes, or 52.06 percent.
The major-party matchup now presents Minnesota voters with a sharp ideological contrast.
Flanagan ran as an unapologetic progressive who supports Medicare for All, tighter limits on U.S. military assistance to Israel and a fundamental restructuring of federal immigration enforcement.
Tafoya is running as a conservative outsider who has aligned herself with President Donald Trump's agenda and with Republican attacks on Minnesota's fraud scandals and immigration policies.
The immigration issue became one of the clearest dividing lines in the Democratic primary.
Flanagan repeatedly criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota and after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers earlier this year.
Craig, by contrast, had voted for the Laken Riley Act in January 2025, joining 45 other House Democrats in supporting the measure.
Flanagan used that vote to argue that Craig was too willing to side with Trump's immigration agenda.
Then, after winning Tuesday night, Flanagan made clear she was not softening the rhetoric for the general election.
"Now let's talk about Donald Trump's out of control ICE force," Flanagan told supporters.
"We need to rip ICE apart and stop them from terrorizing our communities," she said, before adding that the country could still secure the border and create a pathway to citizenship.
That full statement matters because the phrase "rip ICE apart" is easy to present as a demand for no immigration enforcement at all.
Flanagan's own formulation is broader: dismantle or radically remake ICE while maintaining border security and changing the legal immigration system.
Republicans will still have little difficulty turning the shorter phrase into a general-election attack line.
The question is whether Minnesota voters who supported a progressive message in a Democratic primary will respond the same way in a statewide November electorate.
The primary result itself says something important about the Democratic coalition.
Craig entered the race with a reputation for winning a competitive suburban and exurban House district and argued that her record made her the safer general-election choice.
Flanagan instead built a campaign around progressive economics, anti-ICE anger and opposition to the influence of large donors and outside political groups.
Democratic primary voters chose that approach by a wide margin.
The result was also a setback for the party's establishment wing, but describing Craig simply as "Schumer's candidate" goes further than the public record supports.
Craig had strong backing from prominent establishment Democrats, and reporting during the race described Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as privately favoring her.
Neither Schumer nor the DSCC, however, issued the kind of formal public endorsement that Flanagan received from many of her allies.
Flanagan's public endorsement list included retiring Sen. Tina Smith, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Ilhan Omar and other progressive or liberal officeholders.
Gov. Tim Walz did not endorse either candidate, although first lady Gwen Walz backed Craig late in the race.
That makes the primary a real progressive-versus-establishment contest without requiring the stronger claim that Schumer personally put his name on Craig's campaign.
The money gap reinforced that contrast.
Federal campaign-finance filings cited during the race showed Craig raising nearly $13 million during the cycle, compared with just under $7 million for Flanagan.
Outside spending widened the financial imbalance further, with millions flowing into advertising around the race.
Sanders turned that disparity into part of Flanagan's closing argument.
"Peggy Flanagan is about bringing about real change, standing up to the big money interests," Sanders said before the primary.
Flanagan's victory therefore gave progressives a useful national story: a candidate with less campaign money defeated a better-funded rival identified with the party's more moderate wing.
That story is real.
It is also easy to overstate.
The same night produced mixed ideological signals elsewhere, including a progressive defeat in Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary.
The lesson is not that Democratic voters everywhere have moved uniformly left.
It is that progressive candidates can win major statewide primaries when their message fits the electorate, the moment and the local political environment.
Minnesota in 2026 provided an unusually favorable environment for Flanagan's anti-ICE message.
The Trump administration's Operation Metro Surge generated intense controversy across the Twin Cities, and the deaths of Good and Pretti became central political events in the state.
That gave Flanagan a way to connect a national ideological argument about immigration enforcement to events Minnesota voters had experienced directly.
Craig's Laken Riley Act vote then gave Flanagan a concrete congressional vote to use as a contrast.
Flanagan's positions on healthcare and Israel added to the ideological separation.
Her campaign says she will fight for Medicare for All.
She also said she would have supported reducing certain U.S. military aid to Israel, while Craig opposed a House amendment that would have cut billions in assistance.
Those are substantive policy differences, not merely labels such as "radical" or "far-left."
Republicans are already choosing much sharper labels.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee described Flanagan and Michigan Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed as part of a "socialist flank" overtaking the Democratic establishment.
That is a partisan characterization, not an objective party identification.
Flanagan identifies as a progressive Democrat, and her platform contains positions well to the left of Craig on several major issues.
That gives Republicans plenty of ideological contrast without requiring the reporting itself to adopt the NRSC's terminology.
The GOP's second argument is about Minnesota's fraud scandal.
Flanagan has served as lieutenant governor throughout the Walz administration, which has faced intense criticism over fraud involving state-administered social-service programs.
The scandal became serious enough politically that Walz ended his campaign for a third term in January, saying he wanted to focus his remaining time in office on fighting fraud rather than defending his own reelection bid.
Republicans are trying to transfer that vulnerability directly to Flanagan.
The strongest version of that attack is about oversight and accountability: what responsibility did the lieutenant governor have for an administration in which large fraud schemes went undetected or inadequately controlled?
The weaker version simply treats her title as proof that she personally caused the fraud.
Those are not the same claim.
The general election will force Flanagan to answer the first question while pushing back against the second.
Republicans believe Tafoya can make the issue especially damaging because she enters the race without a record in elected office and can run explicitly against the state's political establishment.
NRSC Chairman Tim Scott has gone further, saying Minnesota is one of the races that makes him optimistic about expanding the Republican Senate map.
In a CNN interview before the primary, Scott said Tafoya was "within a point of the lieutenant governor right now."
That statement is politically significant, but it should not be treated as a verified public polling average.
Scott did not identify the poll, its sponsor, sample or methodology during the interview.
The most visible public polling earlier in the year showed a different margin: an Emerson College survey conducted in February had Flanagan at 47 percent and Tafoya at 41 percent.
That poll is now months old and cannot tell voters where the race stands after the primaries.
The honest conclusion is that the current general-election margin is uncertain.
Independent handicappers still give Democrats the advantage.
Inside Elections moved forward after the primary with the Minnesota Senate contest rated Likely DFL, while describing Flanagan as favored but Tafoya as capable of making the race competitive.
That is a long way from saying Republicans cannot win.
It is also a long way from saying Minnesota has already become a toss-up.
The state's recent history explains the caution.
Minnesota has not elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since Norm Coleman won in 2002, and Republicans have gone roughly two decades without winning a statewide election in the state.
At the same time, the fraud scandal, an open Senate seat and an unsettled national environment give Republicans more reason to invest than they have had in many recent cycles.
Tafoya also emerged from her own primary with a clear victory, taking 52.06 percent in a nine-candidate Republican field.
That gives her a legitimate claim to have consolidated GOP voters even though she did not win the state party's convention endorsement earlier in the year.
The next phase of the campaign will reveal whether national Republicans are as confident as their rhetoric suggests.
The clearest evidence will not be another anonymous quote or an unspecified poll.
It will be money.
If the NRSC and allied super PACs begin committing serious general-election resources to Minnesota, that would show they believe Tafoya has a realistic path.
If the major spending remains concentrated in more traditional battlegrounds, the claim that Minnesota is truly in play will look more aspirational.
Democrats face a similar calculation.
Flanagan's fundraising was substantially weaker than Craig's during the primary, and a competitive statewide race could force Democratic groups to spend money they would prefer to use in states with clearer pickup opportunities.
But the primary also showed that Flanagan can mobilize a large Democratic electorate even while being outspent.
That gives both parties evidence for the story they want to tell.
Progressives can point to a 59-percent primary win as proof that voters rejected the safer, more establishment-aligned option.
Republicans can point to Flanagan's ICE, healthcare and Israel positions and argue that the same profile will be harder to sell statewide in November.
Neither side has proved the general-election case yet.
The primary settled one question decisively.
Minnesota Democrats chose Peggy Flanagan's progressive message over Angie Craig's electability argument by nearly 20 points.
It also settled another.
Flanagan is not retreating from her call to dismantle ICE as she moves into the general election.
What remains unsettled is whether that message - combined with the fraud attacks Republicans are preparing - can turn a Senate seat Democrats have held for years into a genuine November battleground.
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Republicans now have the opponent they say they wanted.
The next three months will show whether they actually have the votes - and the money - to take advantage of it.
