After an historic and expensive July 4th fireworks display capped Donald Trump’s self-indulgent commemoration of America’s 250th birthday, voters are now watching state races explode into political pyrotechnics as Democrats fight to win majorities in Congress and Republicans plan to keep buying power.
With the midterm elections just over three months away and several primary races still undecided, most pundits predict the decline in Trump’s approval ratings will result in Democrats winning the House, if infighting doesn’t turn off voters.
Democrats’ dream of taking the U.S. Senate, however, turned into a nightmare with the scandalous Graham Platner debacle in must-win Maine. Energized party leaders hope to put on a master class in democracy as they pick a new candidate before July 27.
The hike to Senate victory is still steep. Republicans have a 53-47 advantage — meaning Democrats must win eight of 11 competitive races, including defending seats currently held in Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Georgia, for a net gain of four seats.
LGBTQ people intent on reversing Project 2025’s prolific erasure might focus on lesbian U.S. Rep. Angie Craig’s race in Minnesota.
With the retirement of Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, The Cook Political Report’s out guru Amy Walter labeled the open seat “likely” Democrat but with only a +3-point advantage.
New York Times Polling data reporter Alex Lemonides notes that “Trump lost Minnesota by four percentage points in 2024, and Minnesotans have not sent a Republican to the Senate since the 2002 midterms, so a Republican win in the general election would buck the trend.”
But this whole election cycle is about bucking trends. With so many Democratic Socialists defeating establishment candidates, “socialist” is no longer a slur, forcing Trump to switch to the old Cold War charge of Communist!
In Minnesota, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)-backed candidate Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is out-polling Craig, a more centrist Democrat who flipped a battleground House seat in 2018. Their primary is on Aug. 11.
Republicans are salivating over challenging Flanagan for her administrative role in the scandal that forced Gov. Tim Walz to forgo a third term and deal with widespread fraud in social programs.
Former NBC’s Sunday Night Football sideline reporter and current political podcaster Michele Tafoya has a built-in “bro” audience. The announcement of her Republican candidacy was featured on ESPN.com.
“As Minnesota’s senator, I will clean up the system, fighting corruption, ending the fraud, and protecting your tax dollars,” Tafoya said. “I will protect what’s fair and safe, standing with our law enforcement officers, deporting dangerous criminals, and keeping female sports for female athletes.”
Craig responded quickly. “Trump’s hand-picked candidate just jumped in the race for U.S. Senate,” she said on social media. “Minnesota needs a Senator who will stand up and fight for our state – and we know it won’t be MAGA Michele.”
Craig tells LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters that she has been happy to represent Minnesota’s Second Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2019. Now she wants to represent the entire state as a U.S. senator.
“The state of Minnesota has been so good to me and my family,” says Craig, who chose to move to the state because it would accept her family.
Craig grew up in a mobile home park in Arkansas, one of three children of a single mother. She worked her way through the University of Memphis, earning a degree in journalism, and became a reporter with the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
She has a long history of fighting for LGBTQ rights, including her own. In the late 1990s, while living in Tennessee, Craig and her then-partner, Debra Langston, adopted their first son, Joshua. Under Tennessee law at the time, only one of them could be recognized as an adoptive parent; Craig was listed as Langston’s roommate.
The birth mother wanted the couple to have Joshua, but her parents intervened, seeking to adopt him. The courts had to decide if Langston and Craig were “fit” parents. One appellate court judge objected to the boy being raised by “open, practicing lesbians,” but his two colleagues disagreed, and Langston and Craig won the precedent-setting case in 2000, albeit with lots of caveats.
“The issue in this case is not whether the members of this court approve the homosexual lifestyle or the adoption of children by homosexuals, but rather whether the adoption of this child by this prospective parent is in the child’s best interest. As in any adoption case, the determinative issue was and remains what is in the child’s best interest,” wrote Judge Alan E. Highers in his opinion concurring with the majority in ruling In re: ADOPTION OF M.J.S. in the Tennessee Court of Appeals.
By then, Craig was working in corporate communications for Smith & Nephew, a multinational maker of medical equipment, and the couple had another son, Jacob, born to Craig through alternative insemination. She and her family moved to London, where the company was based, in the early 2000s. They returned to the U.S. in 2005; Craig went to work for another medical equipment company, St. Jude Medical, in the suburbs of Minneapolis. She later said it was the least lucrative job offer she had, but she took it because she knew the area was welcoming to LGBTQ people.
Craig and Langston separated in 2006, and Craig married Cheryl Greene in California in 2008. They have four sons and three grandsons, with a fourth on the way. Greene is a former middle school teacher still involved with youth programming.
Craig worked for LGBTQ equality within her company and for statewide marriage equality in Minnesota. She also fought against an anti-marriage equality constitutional amendment in 2012, which voters rejected. The state legislature passed a marriage equality bill the following year that Gov. Mark Dayton signed into law.
In 2016, when she ran for Congress in Minnesota’s 2nd District, a Republican stronghold for more than a decade, she told the Twin Cities Pioneer Press that the fight for custody of Joshua gave her strength.
“Whether I win or lose on Election Day, I know that that won’t be the hardest thing or the biggest challenge that I’ve ever faced,” said Craig, then 44. “When you get up every day and wonder, ‘Am I going to (still) have my child the next day?’ you get pretty good at being focused on the big picture.”
“I’ve always talked about my family openly” on the campaign trail and in office, Craig, co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, tells LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters. Often at events in her district and around the state, she’ll meet someone who mentions they have an LGBTQ family member, she notes. She finds that if she listens to constituents and addresses what’s important to them, her identity isn’t an issue.
What Craig has addressed for constituents includes health care costs, such as capping the out-of-pocket cost of insulin and limiting overall out-of-pocket drug costs for people on Medicare. These came from a bill introduced by Craig and became provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. She also wants a public option for health insurance, an increased child tax credit, and she introduced a bill to eliminate federal taxes on Social Security benefits.
In a June 19 SurveyUSA poll, Minnesotans say their single most important issue is inflation (39%) and cost of living, followed by health care, immigration, gas prices, and the war in Iran.
But immigration may soon jump to the front as more information leaks out about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shooting and killing Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop in Houston on Tuesday morning, July 9. Homeland Security says the father, with no criminal record, driving to work, ignored verbal instructions and tried to ram their vehicle. ICE shot him in self-defense — the same excuse ICE used on Jan. 7, 2026, when an ICE agent killed nonviolent protester Renee Good. In both instances, video footage proved ICE lied.
Also caught on tape was Craig’s angry confrontation with Republican Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) on the House floor the day Good was killed after Emmer supported ICE on social media. The story and her response went viral.
But Craig continues to be criticized for voting for the Laken Riley Act, named for a woman who was killed by an undocumented immigrant. It allows for undocumented immigrants to be detained or deported if they are simply accused of crimes, even nonviolent ones. Critics say she has never apologized — but she has.
In a commentary for The Minnesota Star Tribune in May, Craig wrote, in part:
“The text of the bill did not include the word deportation. I made the difficult decision to vote for it. Democrats like Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff — leaders I deeply respect — all came to the same conclusion.
But as I stood side by side with protesters on the streets of Minneapolis and opposite dozens of armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Whipple Federal Building after Renee Good’s killing — and again after the killing of Alex Pretti — I couldn’t help but question whether I made the right call last year … It’s also become clear that supporting any bill that gives ICE new authority in this administration was the wrong decision. And I regret my vote.”
“What happened under Operation Metro Surge was horrific,” Craig tells LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters. The U.S. can secure its borders in a humane fashion while providing a path to citizenship for undocumented people, those brought here as children, and others, she adds.
On LGBTQ rights, Craig says the Equality Act has been a huge priority of hers in the House and would remain so in the Senate.
Since 2019, Craig has introduced the John Lewis Every Child Deserves a Family Act that “would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, religion or marital status in those programs, prohibit the use of federal funds for so-called ‘conversion therapy’ and create a resource center for LGBTQ+ foster and adoptive youth within the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families,” according to a press release.
Another priority is passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named for the late civil rights activist and longtime congressman. “I was lucky enough to serve with John Lewis,” she says.
Additionally, Craig supports campaign finance reform. The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that further loosened restrictions was “just another blow to our democracy,” she says. She supports limits on Supreme Court terms.
On foreign policy, she condemns Trump’s war of choice in Iran. “The administration has had zero strategic objectives,” she says, adding that the war has caused “tremendous economic damage,” such as the spike in gas prices.
And though Craig supports a two-state solution to the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinians having their own state, her campaign does not accept direct donations from AIPAC’s political action committee — the pro-Israel group held fundraisers for her before her Senate announcement — another point exploited by primary opponent Flanagan.
On gender-affirming care for transgender youth, Craig says politicians should not interfere with decisions made by young people and their parents. Regarding trans girls and women in sports, she says the matter is best handled locally — and that local conversations can foster understanding.
But Craig has had a strong public reaction to federal transphobia. After that, then-U.S. Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) introduced the Protect Women’s Sports Act in December 2020. Craig released the following statement:
“As a lesbian woman, I am no stranger to prejudice and intolerance — but this legislation is beyond the pale. Plain and simple, the Protect Women’s Sports Act is transphobic — and this type of discrimination has no place in the halls of Congress. Especially at a time when the transgender community is suffering from a tragic rise in suicide rates and experiencing a surge of transphobic violence, such a bigoted and appalling effort is simply unacceptable. Queer and transgender women must stand together in the face of intolerance — and I am proud to do so today by emphatically denouncing this narrow-minded and hateful legislation, which is harmful not only to transgender women but to the LGBTQ community at-large.”
Craig has been endorsed by prominent LGBTQ groups, including the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, the Human Rights Campaign PAC, Equality PAC, and LPAC. She has also been endorsed by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, plus many nationally known political figures, such as former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Flanagan has the endorsement of Smith and her predecessor, Al Franken, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and, from outside the state, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sanders, among others. U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and the state’s governor, Tim Walz, so far haven’t made endorsements.
“I’m ready on day one” to serve in the Senate, says Craig, noting her four terms in the House, her substantial career before going into politics, and her two votes to impeach Trump. “If we can take the House and Senate, we can put a cap on this administration.”
This is a cross-post from Karen Ocamb’s LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters Substack.
Source: Washington Blade: LGBTQ News, Politics, LGBTQ Rights, Gay News – www.washingtonblade.com
