Representative Angie Craig, a four-term Democrat with a bipartisan approach and a plain-spoken style, is one of two leading candidates in the Democratic primary race for Senate in Minnesota on Tuesday.
Here are five things to know about Ms. Craig, 54, who lives in the south suburbs of Minneapolis.
1. She flipped a swing congressional district in 2018. Ms. Craig won her House seat by defeating Representative Jason Lewis, a Republican, by nearly six percentage points in the midterm elections during President Trump’s first term. She narrowly fended off a competitive Republican challenge in her battleground district in 2020 and has since widened her margin of victory in each successive election. Her supporters say her electoral record makes her a safer general-election bet than her Democratic rival for the Senate, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a progressive.
2. She supported one of Mr. Trump’s signature immigration measures. Ms. Craig joined nearly 50 other House Democrats in voting last year for the Laken Riley Act, Republican-led legislation directing the authorities to detain and deport unauthorized immigrants charged with nonviolent crimes. After the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota left two U.S. citizens dead, Ms. Craig said she regretted her vote. She wrote in a March opinion piece in The Minnesota Star Tribune that it had “become clear that supporting any bill that gives ICE new authority in this administration was the wrong decision.”
3. She was Minnesota’s first openly gay member of Congress. Ms. Craig married her wife, Cheryl Greene, in California in 2008. At the time, same-sex marriage was not legal in Minnesota. In her youth, she wondered if there was a place for her, she has said. She came out while studying at the University of Memphis. “It was tough,” Ms. Craig said in an interview, recalling that her mother did not know anyone who was openly gay. “My mom and grandmother had raised me. I didn’t want to feel like I had disappointed them.”
4. She had a hardscrabble upbringing. Ms. Craig was raised by a single mother in a trailer park in Arkansas, according to her campaign. To get through college, she had two jobs, opening and closing a McDonald’s and working at a Foot Locker. She went on to work as a newspaper reporter and later as a business executive.
5. She was early in calling for Joseph R. Biden Jr. to leave the 2024 presidential race. Ms. Craig was the first House Democrat from a competitive district to publicly urge Mr. Biden to withdraw after his disastrous debate performance. She has a reputation for splitting with her party, and she casts herself her as an opponent of the Washington status quo. “I’ve done nothing but take on the establishment since I got to Washington,” she said in the interview, pointing to her support for term limits and a ban on stock trading for members of Congress. But some senators have seen her as the choice of Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, in the Minnesota race. Mr. Schumer’s office has said he has no preference.
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