No gracias, Peggy Flanagan

No Gracias, Peggy Flanagan

Why I'm not asking my community to fall in line | August 7, 2026

I am an immigration attorney. I was once undocumented myself. I have spent this year sitting across from people who lost their health insurance, lost their jobs, or lost family members to detention. So when I read Peggy Flanagan's campaign website, one line stopped me cold:

"We have seen the consequences of a poorly managed border."

And then this:

"Peggy believes we need to modernize and invest in the technology and capacity needed to maintain orderly borders for the safety and security of everyone."

Read that again, and ask yourself who the audience is. That is not written for us. That is written for the voter who needs to be reassured that she will not be soft on immigration. "Orderly borders." "Safety and security." "The consequences of a poorly managed border." Strip off the name and you could staple it to half the swing-district mailers in this country.

We know this language. We have been on the receiving end of it for thirty years, from both parties. It is the vocabulary of people who want our support and our vigils but not our risk.

The pattern, not the paragraph

One softened website line is not a scandal. The problem is that it fits a pattern.

In June 2025, the Legislature repealed MinnesotaCare eligibility for undocumented adults — a benefit that had existed for barely five months. Roughly 17,000 people lost coverage on December 31. Republicans held a shutdown over the DFL's head and the Walz-Flanagan Administration paid with us.

Notice who said something. Melissa Hortman cast the vote and called it what it was. Erin Murphy called it among the most painful votes she had ever taken, a wound on the soul of Minnesota. Other members walked off the House floor. Those were not perfect responses. Some of them were votes I will never forgive. But they were on the record.

The Lieutenant Governor's contribution was that she was not part of the deal.

Not part of the deal. Not in the room. That is the whole answer.

She was, however, very much in the room for the free school meals announcement. And paid family leave. And every ribbon and every press conference where the Walz–Flanagan administration was going well.

You do not get to be co-branded on the wins and unavailable for the harm.

"I wasn't in the room" is a campaign strategy, not a defense

Here is why this matters more now than it did in June 2025.

Tim Walz ended his bid for a third term under the weight of the fraud crisis that gutted the Department of Human Services — the same crisis the Trump administration used as a pretext to freeze Medicaid payments and to justify Operation Metro Surge, which put three thousand federal agents on Minnesota streets and left three people shot. Our people were the ones who paid for that pretext. Our people stopped going to work, stopped going to clinics, stopped answering the door.

That happened on this administration's watch. And the answer, again, has been that she was not the one running the agency.

So which is it? For eight years she has been the second-highest official in this state, and her defense on every failure is that she lacked authority. Fine. Then what exactly are we electing? Because a senator is one of a hundred. A senator has less formal authority than a lieutenant governor. If "I couldn't stop it" is the answer at the Capitol, it will be the answer in Washington, and it will arrive the first time Democratic leadership decides that our legal status is the thing worth trading to keep a bill alive.

That trade is coming. It always comes. I want to know what she does when it does, and she has not told us.

Same room, same advice

Here is the part nobody in the DFL wants said out loud.

That sentence about orderly borders did not appear on her website by accident, and she did not write it alone. Campaigns like this one are built by a small, closed circle of Minnesota operatives and national consultants who have been running DFL statewide races for years — the same shops, the same pollsters, the same strategists who have been paid handsomely to lose ground on this issue over and over.

We know what they advise, because we have watched them advise it. They advised the party to go quiet in 2025 when Republicans put MinnesotaCare on the table. They advised the party that "we had no choice" was a sufficient answer to a community that had just lost its doctors. Their instinct, every time the polling tightens, is the same: soften the language, split the difference, say "border security" twice and hope the base is too scared of the alternative to leave.

That is the strategy that got us here. It is the strategy that left the DFL with no argument ready when three thousand federal agents arrived in this state. And it is the strategy currently being run under her name.

So when I look at this campaign, I am not only asking what she believes. I am asking who is in the room writing it down — and whether a single one of them has ever paid a price for being wrong about us. Because if she wins on this playbook, the playbook gets validated, and the people who wrote it get promoted to the Senate office.

Nothing here suggests those people changed their minds about us. It suggests they found a better messenger.

Yes, I know about Angie Craig

Spare me the email. I know Angie Craig voted for the Laken Riley Act. I know she was the only Minnesota Democrat to do it, that she stood by it for over a year, and that her regret arrived conveniently in March, in a Star Tribune column, with a primary on the calendar. I am not carrying water for her. Laken Riley is a law that lets ICE detain people accused of shoplifting. I have clients it could swallow.

But understand what the Flanagan campaign is asking of us. It is asking us to treat Craig's bad vote as disqualifying while treating Flanagan's silence as immaterial. It is asking us to hold one candidate to what she did and the other to what she posted.

That is not a moral standard. It is a positioning exercise, and we are the prop.

The invitation has been open the whole time

Someone will say I have not given her a chance to answer.

She has had a year and two months.

The invitation was open in May 2025, when the deal was announced and the People of Color and Indigenous Caucus stood outside that door saying they had been blindsided. It was open in June, when the vote came to the floor and members of her own party wept through it. It was open in December, when seventeen thousand people got their termination notices. It was open through Metro Surge, when our clients stopped leaving the house. It has been open at every forum, every listening session, every Spanish-language interview, every time an organizer with credentials and a microphone asked her directly.

We were not asking for much. Did you oppose it? If you did, why did nobody hear you? Would you do it again?

Nada. Nada empanada.

Not a statement. Not a dissent. Not an acknowledgment. Not even a bad answer — a bad answer would at least be something to argue with. Hortman said it was among the worst votes she ever took. Murphy called it a wound on the soul of Minnesota. Those two cast the votes and still found words. The one person in the building who cast no vote at all found no words for our community.

Let me be unmistakable about November

This is a primary argument, and it ends on August 11.

Whoever wins that primary, I will support in November. The Republican alternative is not a lesser evil or a protest option — it is the party that made ending our health coverage its price for keeping the state open, the party cheering the raids. There is no version of this where I sit out the general, and no one should read this piece as permission to.

What I am saying is that the primary is the one moment we have leverage, and leverage unused is leverage surrendered. Tuesday is the only day of this entire cycle when a Democrat has to care what we think.

Our community has been loyal to this party through repeal, through raids, through silence. Loyalty that is never tested is not loyalty — it is something the party budgets for. Ask the question at every door, every forum, every phone bank call you get between now and August 11.

Our support is not a base to be inherited. It is earned. And it has not been earned here.

Why DFL Voters Should Withhold Their Support Through the Endorsement Process

February 1, 2026

Crop art from MN State Fair 2025

I write this as an immigrant rights advocate, a former undocumented person, and now an immigration attorney. I am not interested in purity politics. I understand compromise. I understand governing. I understand that elections often involve choosing between imperfect options.

But accountability still matters. And right now, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan is asking Minnesota voters, especially progressive voters, to offer support without accountability.

I’m not willing to do that.

Selective Credit, Selective Silence

Lieutenant Governor Flanagan has been highly visible when it comes to celebrating the accomplishments of the Walz–Flanagan administration. She takes credit for the wins. She appears at announcements. She speaks proudly about progress Minnesota has made.

But when it comes to one of the most devastating decisions made by that same administration, the rollback of health care coverage for undocumented adults, she was conspicuously absent.

Last year, Governor Walz, Speaker Melissa Hortman, and Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy announced a state budget deal that eliminated state-funded health insurance for thousands of undocumented adults. A law that had been in effect for only one year was undone.

This was not abstract policy. It meant people losing access to doctors, medication, and preventative care overnight.

Lieutenant Governor Flanagan later stated she was not part of that deal. What she has never done is publicly address it. No statement. No dissent. No acknowledgment of the harm caused.

That silence did not feel accidental. It felt strategic, and smacks of what we all hate: campaign talking points.

You don’t get to celebrate the good while disclaiming responsibility for the ugly.

“We Had No Choice” Is Not Leadership

The explanation offered was familiar. Republicans demanded the repeal or threatened to shut down the government.

Let’s be clear about what that means. Progressive leadership chose to sacrifice undocumented adults’ health care to avoid a shutdown.

At the same time, the Walz–Flanagan administration regularly condemns anti-immigrant cruelty coming from the Trump administration and the Republican Party.

You cannot credibly denounce those policies while reproducing their outcomes at the state level.

Intent does not erase impact. And silence does not absolve responsibility.

Speaker Hortman herself described this vote as one of the worst she had taken. That acknowledgment mattered. The Lieutenant Governor offered none.

It Is Reasonable to Move On

I think many Minnesotans are simply tired.

Tired of decisions made behind closed doors.
Tired of harm followed by silence.
Tired of being told to accept messes as the cost of governing.

The Walz–Flanagan administration has been marked by serious failures in judgment, oversight, and responsiveness across multiple issues. People are fed up with how many matters were handled and how often communities were asked to absorb the damage without meaningful accountability.

Governor Walz has stepped away from another run. That makes this a natural inflection point.

Moving on from the Walz–Flanagan political era is not disloyal. It is healthy.

Minnesota has other good candidates. Capable candidates. Candidates who were not part of these decisions and who may be better positioned to restore trust.

Why Leadership Style Matters in the Senate

Supporters often point out that the Lieutenant Governor does not control outcomes. That is true.

But that is exactly why this question matters.

The U.S. Senate is also a place where no single member controls outcomes. Senators influence, negotiate, pressure, dissent, and shape the public record. They do not get to pass responsibility upward simply because they are not at the top of the ticket. Are we going to get the same argument, that in order to avoid bigger impacts, we must sacrifice immigrants, over and over?

Minnesota cannot afford a senator whose response to harm is that they were not in the room or in charge.

Leadership in both roles requires using influence when formal authority is limited. It requires speaking publicly when silence is safer. It requires taking responsibility even when the final decision rests elsewhere.

That is the standard voters should apply here.

What Accountability Would Actually Look Like

Some will ask what happens if Lieutenant Governor Flanagan acknowledges the harm. What then?

Acknowledgment alone is not enough. Accountability has to lead somewhere.

At a minimum, it would require a public explanation of her silence at the time, not as a campaign talking point but as a reckoning. It would require stating clearly whether she opposed the rollback and, if so, why she chose not to say so publicly.

More importantly, it would require a commitment to specific actions going forward.

That includes a clear pledge to champion the full restoration of health care access for undocumented adults, to refuse to treat immigrant communities as bargaining chips in future negotiations, and to use the Senate platform to oppose similar tradeoffs even when they are politically inconvenient.

It would also require a demonstrated willingness to break from party leadership when progressive values are at stake, rather than deferring to the dynamics of power.

Accountability is not about relitigating the past. It is about proving that harm will not be repeated.

How DFL Voters Should Engage Right Now

This is why I am urging DFL voters to withhold their support at this stage.

Do not rush to line up behind any one candidate. Let the process play out. Use every opportunity to ask questions and demand clarity.

Ask candidates how they will lead when they are not the final decision-maker. Ask how they will respond when party leadership makes choices that cause real harm. Ask what they will do differently.

Withholding support is not a rejection. It is a demand for better.

There is value in allowing the full field to compete and in letting the primary do its job. Momentum should not replace scrutiny.

Why I’m Withholding My Support

I am not calling for political exile. I am calling for engagement.

Until Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan directly addresses the rollback of health care for undocumented adults, including her silence, her responsibility, and whether she would make the same choice again, I am withholding my support.

I am encouraging others to participate fully, ask hard questions, and push for better leadership.

Minnesota’s progressive base deserves more than lesser-of-two-evils logic. Immigrant communities deserve more than praise when it is convenient and silence when harm is done.

Participation is power.
Accountability is leadership.

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