- Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan will become governor if Tim Walz becomes vice president
- She will be the first female governor of Minnesota
- Flanagan would also become the first Native American woman in the U.S.
If Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz becomes vice president in January, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan will finish her term.
She would be the first female governor in Minnesota history.
And she would be the first Native American female governor in U.S. history, as two men of Native American descent previously served as governors of Oklahoma.
Flanagan’s lieutenant governor post would be filled by the state Senate president.
That seat is currently held by state Sen. Bobby Joe Champion. If Champion were to become Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, he would be the first black person to hold that position.
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (left) would be Minnesota’s first female governor and the first Native American governor nationwide if Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (right) becomes vice president next year.
Peggy Flanagan is a citizen of the White Earth Nation and is the daughter of the late Native American activist Marvin Manypenny, although she was raised by her mother.
Flanagan, 44, was raised by her mother but is the daughter of prominent Native American activist Marvin Manypenny.
She is a citizen of the White Earth Nation.
“My father used to say, ‘My daughter, I want to burn down the system, and you want to go into the system and change it from the inside out,'” Flanagan told MPRNews after her father passed away in 2020. “That’s a pretty good summary of how my father operated and how I operate.”
“I’m very proud to be his daughter,” she added. “When he passed away, he left with a lot of wisdom, frankly. We’ll miss him very much.”
Flanagan became interested in politics while working on Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone’s 2002 re-election campaign while a student at the University of Minnesota.
Wellstone tragically died in a plane crash that year.
Flanagan went on to become a community organizer.
Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan speaks at the Sundance Film Festival’s Indian House in January 2023
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (right) visits Prince’s property, Paisley Park, after Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill renaming a seven-mile stretch of Highway 5 as the Prince Rogers Nelson Memorial Highway in 2023.
He worked for Wellstone Action, named after the late DFL senator, where he spent eight years teaching candidates how to run successful political campaigns, according to MinnPost.
He ran for the Minneapolis School Board in 2004, his first successful run.
When a state House seat opened up in Flanagan’s St. Louis Park district in 2015, she ran unopposed.
In 2017, Walz chose the lawmaker to be his running mate ahead of the 2018 gubernatorial race.
At the time, Walz, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives whose district leaned slightly Republican, needed the liberal Flanagan to help balance his ticket politically.