The Minnesota Progressive Who Worries Republicans More Than Walz - WSJ

FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn.—Only a few of her constituents seemed to actually recognize her as Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan walked around the Minnesota State Fair on a recent day. While her profile is far lower than that of Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, her decadeslong influence on him has been profound and she is poised to succeed him as the state’s next governor should her boss ascend to a higher office in the November election.

Flanagan, who would be the nation’s first indigenous woman to serve as a governor if Vice President Kamala Harris and Walz win, has served as something of a progressive whisperer for Walz, according to some Democrats in this state. Walz, now 60, first met Flanagan, 44, on a frozen weekend in January 2005 at Camp Wellstone, a political boot camp in St. Paul for Democrats who wanted to push Minnesota’s politics in a more progressive direction.

Flanagan was among the trainers that weekend and Walz, then preparing to make his first-ever bid for elected office, was one of the students. He would go on to become a six-term congressman and two-term governor, while she would later be elected to the Minnesota House and as Walz’s lieutenant in the 2018 and 2022 elections.

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Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of the Ojibwe, has already campaigned for Harris in Arizona and might do additional trips this fall. She declined to directly answer whether she or Walz is more liberal, but eagerly defended the expansive agenda passed by the Minnesota legislature in 2023 after the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, as the Democratic Party is known in the state, held control of the governorship and both legislative chambers—a trifecta—after the 2022 election. That record has made Walz a target of criticism from Republicans.

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