In its 237 years, no Native American woman has ever served in the United States Senate. This November, that could change -- not once, but twice. When Peggy Flanagan won Minnesota's Democratic Senate primary this week, she became the second Native woman positioned to break that barrier, joining Mary Peltola of Alaska, who is running a fiercely competitive race of her own. Should either prevail, she would make history; should both, the Senate would seat two Native women at once, in a single election, having seated none in more than two centuries.
On Tuesday night in Minneapolis, Peggy Flanagan took the stage to celebrate a victory that some $20 million had been spent to prevent. Outside groups backing her opponent, Representative Angie Craig, had flooded the state with ads, roughly four times what Flanagan's side could spend -- and it made no difference; her lead only widened, and she won by nearly 18 points.
"This campaign has always been about the many versus the money," she told the crowd. The seat she is running for -- open with the retirement of Senator Tina Smith -- sits in a state that has not sent a Republican to the Senate in more than 20 years, which makes Flanagan, the lieutenant governor of Minnesota and the highest-ranking Native woman in elected executive office in the country, the clear favorite to win it in November.
Flanagan's own story -- of hardship and heritage -- has never been incidental to her politics; she has made it the point. Raised in St. Louis Park by a mother who at times relied on public assistance, Flanagan, a citizen of the White Earth Nation, wove that history through her victory speech on Tuesday.
"I am the daughter of Marvin Manypenny," she said, naming her father, an Ojibwe activist known for his battles over tribal sovereignty -- "an activist who was always ready to get into good trouble for a good cause." Her clan is the Wolf Clan, she reminded the room, "and the role of our clan is to leave no one behind."
Two thousand miles northwest, Mary Peltola faces a steeper climb. Alaska went for Donald Trump by 13 points in 2024, and Peltola is running not against a newcomer but against a sitting Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, seeking his third term. Yet the race is genuinely up for grabs: in July, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved it from 'lean Republican' to a pure toss-up, making it one of the few Republican-held Senate seats Democrats have a real chance to flip. A measure of how competitive it has become: through the most recent quarter, Peltola outraised Sullivan, the incumbent, by better than three to one.
A moderate with a proven ability to win votes far outside her own party, Peltola has built a broad appeal on fish, fuel costs, and the practical concerns of daily Alaskan life, giving her a reach few Democrats in the state have ever had. Alaska's rules have helped boost her campaign as well: more than half of its voters register with no party at all, and its ranked-choice system -- the same one that helped carry her to office in 2022 -- rewards candidates who can reach beyond their base.
That she is on this ballot at all is its own piece of history. In 2022, Peltola, who is Yup'ik, won a special election to fill the seat left by the death of Representative Don Young, defeating Sarah Palin in an upset and becoming the first Alaska Native ever elected to Congress. She lost the seat two years later by fewer than three points -- and rather than retreat, she set her sights higher.
A former fishing-boat captain who raised seven children along the Kuskokwim River, she has built her campaign around the plainest facts of Alaskan life. "Growing up, Alaska was a place of abundance," she said in the video announcing her run. "Now we have scarcity." Her platform, as she puts it, comes down to three words: "fish, family and freedom."
Together they stand at the edge of a threshold no Native woman has ever crossed. Native Americans have sat in the Senate before -- four men, over more than two centuries -- but no Native woman ever has, in a chamber that has legislated over tribal nations, treaties, and lands since before those nations were granted citizenship. This November, that could change not once but twice, with one woman from the North Woods of Minnesota and the other from the Alaskan tundra. After 237 years, the voices that decide the future of Native peoples at the highest levels of government may finally include a Native woman's own -- and this year, they may include two.
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