Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan's campaign sent a fundraising email after her primary win claiming no Native American woman has ever served in the U.S. Senate, a boast that glosses over Elizabeth Warren's years of disputed ancestry claims.
Flanagan defeated centrist Rep. Angie Craig in Tuesday's Democratic Senate primary, winning 59% of the vote to Craig's 40% with 80% of expected ballots counted. Hours later, her campaign's fundraising operation fired off an email casting her potential election in historic terms.
The email, reported by the New York Post, read in part:
"Friend, in almost 250 years, there's never been a Native woman serving in the US Senate. It's time to change that."
Flanagan, who is Ojibwe and a member of the White Earth Nation, has a legitimate claim to Native American heritage. But the framing, "there's never been a Native woman" in the Senate, landed awkwardly for anyone who remembers Sen. Elizabeth Warren's long, messy saga of claiming Cherokee ancestry, a saga that consumed years of political oxygen and ended with an apology to the Cherokee Nation.
Warren's ancestry claims stretch back more than 40 years. In 1984, she contributed recipes to a Native American cookbook and identified herself as Cherokee. Two years later, she listed herself as "American Indian" on a survey issued by the State Bar of Texas.
Between 1995 and 2004, Harvard Law School identified Warren as Native American on federal affirmative action forms. Warren later said she was unaware Harvard had done so.
The Oklahoma-born senator was widely mocked for claiming Cherokee ancestry before and after her 2012 election. After Donald Trump's 2016 election win, the issue intensified. Trump offered a $1 million donation to a charity of Warren's choice if she could prove her ancestry.
Warren took the bait. In 2018, she rolled out a DNA analysis conducted by Stanford University professor Carlos D. Bustamante. The analysis concluded she had a Native American ancestor "in the range of 6-10 generations ago", meaning somewhere between a great-great-great-great-grandparent and a more distant relative. Some geneticists argued the analysis was flawed because of limited Native American data in genetic databases.
The Cherokee Nation did not applaud the effort. The tribe called Warren's DNA test stunt "inappropriate and wrong." By early 2019, Warren issued an apology to the Cherokee Nation.
So when Flanagan's campaign declared that no Native woman has ever served in the Senate, the statement was technically accurate, Warren's ancestry claims collapsed under scrutiny. But it also conveniently erased a chapter of Democratic Party history that the party would rather forget. Warren did, after all, spend years presenting herself as Native American in professional and political settings. Harvard listed her that way for nearly a decade.
Flanagan's primary win itself was decisive. She overcame a massive fundraising gap, raising roughly $6.6 million to Craig's $12.7 million, and still won by nearly 20 points. Craig had the backing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Flanagan had endorsements from Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Warren endorsing Flanagan adds another layer to the ancestry question. Warren, whose own Native American claims were debunked, helped propel a candidate now making her Native identity a centerpiece of her Senate bid.
The primary was shaped by immigration more than identity. AP News reported that the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis turned the race upside down. Craig had voted for the Laken Riley Act, a Trump-backed immigration enforcement bill, and that vote became a major liability in a progressive primary. Craig later said she regretted the vote but defended it as reflecting the realities of a competitive district.
Flanagan ran hard to the left. In her victory speech, Fox News reported, she declared:
"We need to rip ICE apart and stop them from terrorizing our communities."
She also campaigned on Medicare for All and ending military aid to Israel. Her platform placed her well to the left of Craig and well to the left of the median Minnesota voter.
Republicans see an opening. One anonymous GOP operative told Fox News that "Minnesota and Michigan being in play was not on Chuck Schumer's bingo card this cycle." Republican Senate candidate Michele Tafoya, the former ESPN sideline reporter, is polling within one point of Flanagan. Tafoya struck a different tone on primary night.
"We've had a crisis of leadership here. We've seen what career politicians have done in this state. They've brought us to a place of national embarrassment, and this state is ready for change."
Flanagan's campaign is correct on the narrow factual point. The U.S. Senate's own records show that four male Native American senators have served in the chamber's history: Robert Owen of Oklahoma, Charles Curtis of Kansas, Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, and most recently Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma. Curtis went on to serve as Herbert Hoover's vice president. Mullin now serves as secretary of Homeland Security.
No woman of Native American heritage has held a Senate seat. If Flanagan wins in November, she would make history.
But the fundraising email's framing, pitched as though no one in the Senate has ever even claimed Native American identity as a woman, sidesteps the Warren episode entirely. Warren did not just float the idea privately. She put it on a bar survey. She contributed to a cookbook under that identity. Harvard listed her as Native American for federal reporting purposes for nearly a decade. She took a DNA test on national television to try to prove it.
The Cherokee Nation rebuked her for it. She apologized. And now her party's newest Senate nominee is fundraising off the premise that the whole thing never happened.
Newsmax noted the broader pattern: Flanagan's win mirrors a wave of progressive insurgents defeating establishment-backed Democrats, a trend that has rattled party leadership ahead of a difficult midterm landscape. Flanagan was outspent nearly two-to-one and still won going away, fueled by grassroots energy and anger over immigration enforcement.
In her victory speech, Flanagan cast the race in populist terms:
"For months now, I have been telling you that this campaign was about the many versus the money. Well guess what? The many just won."
That framing may play well in a primary. Whether a candidate who wants to abolish ICE and cut military aid to Israel can win a general election in a state Republicans are actively targeting is another question. Flanagan has raised nearly $7 million, less than half of what Craig raised, and the general election will be far more expensive.
Flanagan has a real claim to Native American heritage and a real shot at making history. Warren did not and does not. The difference matters. But pretending Warren's years of false claims simply never occurred is not history-making, it is history-editing, and voters deserve better than that from a party that spent years defending Warren's story before it fell apart.
