Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) officially announced her campaign for a Minnesota seat in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.
Craig is one of three candidates gunning for the DFL party’s 2026 senate nomination. She joins Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and former Minnesota senator Melisa López Franzen in the DFL’s race for Sen. Tina Smith’s soon-to-be-vacated seat. Retired Navy SEAL Adam Schwarze and the 2024 Republican candidate for Senate, Royce White, are both running in the GOP for the seat.
Craig said she planned to run for Smith’s seat in February after Smith announced her retirement from the Senate.
Flanagan also promptly announced her senate campaign after Smith shared her retirement plans. Her campaign officially launched on March 27.
In her campaign announcement video, Craig said she would fight back against President Donald Trump’s Republican administration and criticized Republicans for letting the Trump administration and billionaires like Elon Musk damage democracy.
“We’ve got to break through the chaos and take them head-on,” Craig said in her campaign video.
Musk, the Trump-appointed leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, closed or shrunk 11 federal agencies, fired or planned to fire more than 120,000 federal employees and canceled thousands of grants this year.
In her time as a U.S. Representative, Craig fought for tax cuts for small businesses and the middle class. She passed a bill capping the cost of insulin at $35 for Medicare users in the House in 2023.
Craig won her congressional seat in Minnesota’s 2nd district in 2019 after beating incumbent GOP Rep. Jason Lewis. The GOP held the seat for almost 20 years before Craig’s 2019 upset win.
Craig — who grew up in a trailer park, was raised by a single mother and fought to adopt her four children with her wife — said she knows how to fight like an underdog.
“They keep underestimating us,” Craig said in her campaign video. “And we keep winning.”
Craig will be the major centrist candidate on the DFL side of the 2026 Senate race. Craig has already been endorsed by former Rep. Dean Phillips, who attempted to primary former President Joe Biden in the 2024 election.
The DFL endorsement is expected to happen in May or June of 2026 ahead of the November elections.