Olson: Rep. Angie Craig enters U.S. Senate race ready to upset seniority, decorum

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When Democratic U.S. Rep. Angie Craig started talking about problems with slow mail in her south-central suburban Twin Cities district a couple of years ago, I might have rolled my eyes and chalked it up to a swing-district incumbent chasing clout for a re-election campaign.

It‘s a formula that can work: The politician targets an unpopular institution and then gets credit for taking it on, regardless of whether they accrue tangible results.

I’ve been surprised at how doggedly Craig kept at it, surveying constituents, tracking delivery problems, pushing for increased staffing and a new post office near the Farmington-Lakeville border.

She’s willing to take on giants, but that wasn’t the point she was making when she brought up mail delivery on Saturday in her official U.S. Senate campaign kickoff at The Market at Malcolm Yards in Minneapolis.

She wanted to talk about representation. She recalled how a reporter asked why she kept returning to New Prague, a city she helped get on the list for a new post office, when she receives only 30% of the vote there.

Craig said, “Well, as it turns out, my job as a United States representative is to represent everyone — even if they don’t always agree with me.”

She’s never run statewide before, but Craig so far appears to be the one to beat. She has a personal and political record as a tenacious, salty street fighter who understands the average person’s struggles regardless of their political stripes.

Craig has cast her lot in the race now because U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, who is also a Democrat, isn’t seeking re-election next year.

Craig also, notably, has the imprimatur of Dave Wellstone, the elder son of the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash while seeking re-election to the same seat Craig hopes to win.

Wellstone’s green campaign bus, to the surprise of no one, remains under repair and wasn’t on the scene Saturday, but the son called Craig a “proven winner” who has character, integrity and chutzpah and an ability to connect with all kinds of people as his father did.

Craig pledged to show up everywhere, listen to everyone and stand up to “wannabe authoritarian bullies” while fighting to get [expletive] done.

In recent weeks, she’s held face-to-face town halls in Republican congressional districts while the incumbents hide behind telephone forums and partisan events.

It‘s hard to fathom Craig hiding from her constituents, let alone the leadership of her own party.

“I’m willing to get out of line and challenge the status quo,” she said.

She has receipts. In December, Craig bested a septuagenarian Democratic representative to take over as the ranking minority member on the House Agriculture Committee.

She promises now to bring the same upstart, gutsy approach to the Senate, which she said “seems more worried about maintaining decorum than maintaining our democracy.”

Craig took aim at President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a Minnesota native. “Keeping Americans safe also means keeping classified national security info out of the damn group chat. Looking at you, Pete Hegseth.”

She called for an array of government reforms to keep corporate cash out of campaigns, end gerrymandering and ban stock trades by members of Congress.

“While Americans are watching their 401(k)s disappear in this senseless trade war, [U.S. Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene and a whole bunch of Trump‘s buddies just happen to be calling their brokers right before he makes a major tariff announcement,” Craig said. “It‘s corruption through and through.”

The reforms would be hard sells with strong resistance, but it sure was great to hear a candidate express outrage and a willingness to go hard, darn the consequences.

Craig can point to results on other tough issues, including insulin, as she wrote the bill to cap costs for seniors at $35 a month. “A lot of people have taken credit for that legislation, but it was my team and I that got it done,” she said.

As Minnesotans get to know her, they will hear about her personal story of being raised by a single mother in an Arkansas trailer park, getting her first job at McDonald’s, earning a college degree and finding professional success at a Minnesota medical manufacturing firm.

No one paved the way for Craig.

She could have played it safe and sought re-election to the House, where she’s turned a swing seat into a relatively safe re-election bet for herself. Craig nodded to that victory, noting that last November she outperformed most other Democrats, except, she underscored, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar. “Make sure she knows I said that,” Craig warned her supporters, lest she risk the ire of the state’s senior senator, who definitely keeps score.

Craig’s speech quoted Wellstone, but mercifully she didn’t use the most famous quote about how we all do better when we all do better. Instead, she said, “politics doesn’t have anything to do with left, right or center. It has to do with trying to do right by people.”

As she concluded, the gun-owning grandmother of three smiled, grabbed the pint of beer by her side and said, “Cheers, everybody, I’m taking a drink.”