Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan waves to supporters alongside her 13-year-old daughter Siobhan and her husband Tom Weber after the Senate race was called in her favor at the DFL watch party during the midterm elections Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026 in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
ST PAUL (Minnesota Reformer) – Peggy Flanagan, in her first news conference since being elected to the U.S. Senate, hailed the new voices headed to Congress after Democrats won landslide victories across the country in Tuesday’s midterms.
Voters elected at least 10 new Democratic senators, already the largest incoming class of elected first-time Democratic Senators in 40 years, with results from Alaska and Mississippi still outstanding. Many made history: Flanagan is the first Native American woman elected to the Senate, Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan the first Muslim and Chris Pappas of New Hampshire the first out gay man.
All those new voices need a new leader, Flanagan said.
“I am tremendously grateful for Chuck Schumer’s leadership … and I think it is time for new leadership,” Flanagan said, repeating a campaign promise to support an alternative.
She did not say who she thinks should replace Schumer, the soon-to-be 76-year-old senator from New York who has led the Democratic caucus in the upper chamber for the past decade and first arrived in Congress in 1981.
Flanagan rode a blue wave to victory with a batch of other new progressives including El-Sayed, Juliana Stratton in Illinois and Troy Jackson in Maine.
All are eager to push the party to use their new majorities in Congress to advance sweeping economic proposals: Medicare for All, universal childcare, raising the federal minimum wage.
Flanagan also said there’s opportunity to pass popular legislation with Republican support, which will generally be necessary to overcome the Senate filibuster, such as forcing an end to the war in Iran, banning prior authorization in health insurance, guaranteeing farmers the right to repair their equipment.
“We are going to pass some pretty bold legislation. If the president decides that he wants to screw over the American people and veto those bills, I guess that’s his choice,” Flanagan said.
Polls showed Flanagan in a tight race with Michele Tafoya, a retired sports broadcaster whom Republicans saw as their best chance in years of winning statewide. Unofficial results from the secretary of state, however, show her winning by 10 percentage points, nearly matching the margin of victory of moderate Gov.-elect Amy Klobuchar’s victory.
That will fuel Flanagan’s argument that Democrats must show they’re not just “nibbling around the edges” in order to continue building momentum to retake the White House in 2028.
She said Democrats also have a mandate to investigate the Trump family’s sprawling business empire that’s grown markedly since Trump took office in 2025, including crypto, international real estate and mineral deals, defense contracts and presidential pardons for campaign contributors.
And, she said, Democrats must hold the Trump administration accountable for its violent immigration crackdown that left two American citizens dead in Minneapolis.
“There’s a long list of things that this administration needs to answer for,” Flanagan said. “In Minnesota, Renee Good’s family and Alex Pretti’s family deserve justice.”
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