MinnPost reporter Peter Callaghan moderated a one-on-one with Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan at Saturday’s MinnPost Festival. Here are the highlights of that conversation:
(Note: This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.)
Peter: Sometimes no introduction is necessary and so, just quickly, let’s run through a very lengthy resume for someone of your tender years. Born and raised in St. Louis Park, University of Minnesota graduate in American Indian Studies and child psychology. (Your) father was Marvin Manypenny, mother Patricia Flanagan. (You were an) organizer and mentor with Wellstone Action, the youngest member – Is this still true? – of the Minneapolis School Board.
Flanagan: I don’t think it’s still true.
Callaghan: But it was?
Flanagan: It was.
Callaghan: You can never take that away. You were also the first state director of the Children’s Defense Fund, a state legislator, lieutenant governor and just maybe, depending on the race, the first female and person of color governor of Minnesota. But apparently you don’t want to talk about that.
Flanagan: I mean, there’s a lot of work that we have to do over the next 38 days to make that a reality.
Callaghan: OK, so we can’t talk about that. So there’s a question I’ve always wondered: Why is the city in Minneapolis in Minnesota named after St. Louis?
Flanagan: That’s a great question. I don’t know the answer, but I can tell you a fun fact about St. Louis Park. We are very proud of St. Louis Park. But one of the fun facts about St. Louis Park is that wherever you live in the city, you are within walking distance to a local park. That may not be exactly the reason why it’s called St. Louis Park, but that’s my own theory. And I’m sure there’s someone in here, in this audience, who absolutely knows why St. Louis Park is named St. Louis Park.
Callaghan: Anyone want to try to answer? Because I do know the answer. I believe the answer is it’s because of the Minneapolis and St. Paul railroad, of which the railroad had the delightful nickname the Tootin Louie.
Flanagan: I’m going to leave that alone. (The audience is laughing).
Callaghan: This is like a middle school audience… Alright, quasi serious. Your father was Ojibwe, your mother Irish Catholic. That’s a good combination. How did those two influences come to make Peggy Flanagan?
Flanagan: Well, it’s a fiery combination, too. And I like to say I’m O-apostrophe-jibwe (O’Jibwe). So my mom and dad actually met at the detox. They both worked there on Chicago Avenue. My grandmother actually introduced them and there’s a picture of my parents – I should share it on my social media so that folks could see this so you can fully appreciate their vibe. It is my dad, and he’s got these aviator sunglasses on and this denim jacket and a white T-shirt. My mom has this faux fur jacket. She didn’t look anything like my mom. She had very, very long blonde hair and was super skinny, and my parents were standing in front of their bright red Chevette, stone cold, just looking super cool. And I was like, mom, this is the coolest you’ve ever looked. They were together for about nine years and I didn’t grow up with my dad. I was really lucky, and I’m one of, I think, the few native folks who was able to reconnect with my dad. He said, “My girl, it’s a good thing I wasn’t in your life until I got healthy and sober.” I got the benefit of having my dad when he was ready to be my dad.
I was raised in a household where we just had women who just did the work. My grandmother was involved in electoral politics in the DFL before it was fashionable for women to be engaged and involved. And she moved to Washington, D.C. My mom quickly followed her after she graduated from high school to work on Humphrey’s presidential race in 1968. We are DFLers. It is part of our identity.
And then my dad, he didn’t vote until I was on the ballot. And he was like, “My girl, I think you have to burn the system down. You think you can change it from the inside out. We need both.” So what you get is me.
I’ve lost both of my parents. My dad in January of 2020 and then my mom on Nov. 18 of 2022, shortly after the election. But my mom knew that we won, she knew that we had a trifecta. And I am so grateful that I get to do this work every day and to try to live up to their legacy. But also, I’ve been missing my mom so much lately because she would be so excited about this election. I get a lot fewer critiques these days, because every time I was on “Almanac,” my phone would immediately ring as soon as it was done, and she’d be like, “You look great. You should have said this.” But, you know, I’m so grateful that they’re my parents. Thank you for asking about both of them.
Callaghan: I kind of want to push it one step further. Your father seemed like kind of a pain in the ass. And I say that in a good way.
Flanagan: 100%, yes he was.
Callaghan: He gave it to the tribal governments as much as he gave it to the white governments. He was very opinionated and that’s a tactic. It’s not one you tend to use.
Flanagan: It is not one I tend to use. I have been on the receiving end sometimes of my dad being a pain in the ass. And it’s all right, because I think it made me a veteran leader. I would say, my dad, he was a hell raiser for sure, but also cared so much about making sure, especially, that our young Anishinaabe people have access to their culture and identity. That was incredibly important to him. And you know, he ran for tribal council many times, and after he died, we found this pamphlet from his campaign. On the front of it there was this photo that seemed like he had been taken in like Olan Mills or something. That is the classiest my dad has ever looked. And (the pamphlet) said: “The right to govern ourselves is inherently ours.” That is something that I absolutely carry with me, and I think about all the time, especially this year, in this election.
There are two reactions when people find out who my dad is, only two. The first being, “Oh, Marvin’s your dad!” The second one being, “Oh, Marvin’s your dad.” There’s like nothing in between. But my favorite thing is when I meet community and people say, “Oh, you’re Marvin’s girl. You look just like him.”
Callaghan: You talked a lot about, when talking about politics and governing, your experiences growing up in St. Louis Park, raised by a single mother who sought and received help from various government programs, public education through college. Obviously, that colors your perceptions about benefits of government, but does it also give you the ability to critique programs and to see what makes them better? If you can think of an example, I’d love to hear it.
Flanagan: My mom moved us to the community of St. Louis Park when I was just a baby, using a Section 8 housing voucher. She picked St. Louis Park specifically because she knew that we would have access to a really strong neighborhood and community, great public schools. And I have been able to benefit from that investment. It’s one of the things that I used to really shy away from talking about. As a kid who grew up with a different colored lunch ticket, I was used to making myself as small as possible sometimes. But that didn’t serve me or other people who, frankly, have also been through something similar. And so when I got to Children’s Defense Fund, I was like, “Oh, I am here and at these tables advocating for other kids, just like me and the family I was raised in.”
The Child Care Assistance Program allowed my mom to go back to school. We relied on SNAP, which back in the day we called food stamps, and I’m sitting in front of you alive today as a kid who had really bad asthma because of access to medical assistance and all of those things that helped lift my family into the middle class. My mom went to St. Kate’s, and she got her associate’s degree in phlebotomy. That made a tremendous difference for our family.
So we’ve really leaned in there, because so often we hear conversations at the Capitol, folks talk about “those people,” but I am those people. Those people should have a seat at the table and should talk about some of those programs. I think one of the things that we do is we make it really hard for people to be poor. One of the things that we did to improve the programming around MFIB (Minnestota Family investment Program) is that you only have to re-up once a year, instead of every six months filling out this paperwork, which is basically like filing your taxes. For families who are already doing their best, I think that that makes a big difference. And I would just say, one of the things that we miss is that when we pass policies, if we are not actually in relationship or conversation with the people who are directly impacted by these policies, we’re not doing it right.
When I was in the Legislature, I was surprised by how often someone would say, “Oh, I introduced this bill.” And I was like, “Oh, who did you talk to?” “Oh, nobody. Great idea.” And so I think those are things that are helpful for us when we do this work is to hear directly from folks about how their lives are impacted, and then try to make sure that that’s part of how we implement these policies.
Callaghan: What’s it like being married to a journalist? I hear it’s a living hell.
Flanagan: So this is an unexpected question. Do you all know who I married to? I’m married to Tom Weber, formerly of MPR. And I know, I hear it on the road all the time, people go, “Oh, so you’re the one who took my Tom Weber away.” And they’re like, “Well, I hope it’s worth it.”
I got to marry my local celebrity crush. We’ve been married for five years, and we just celebrated our five year anniversary on Sept. 14. We were married on the shores of Lake Pepin in our friend’s backyard. All four of our parents were able to be there. It was really wonderful. When we got married, we didn’t know that we would be stuck in the house together during COVID. So it turns out we really like each other and have stayed married. But being married to a journalist means that we have a whole lot of intense conversations all of all of the time. I love it.
When Tom talks to Siobhan, to our daughter, he’ll be like, “Well, that’s a great question. That’s a journalist question. What’s another question you could ask?” And she’s like, “I’m just trying to do my homework, Tom.” It’s an adventure.
Callaghan: We’re problem pointer-outers.
Flanagan: Oh, yes you are. 100%. But (Tom’s) an introvert. I am not. So that is the dance that we dance. But I am still completely head over heels for my husband and I still have a great big crush on him.
Callaghan: You’ve always worked on Indigenous education, from college to school board, to the Legislature to when you were named lieutenant governor, both through curriculum and individual achievement, which is more important, maybe. And I wanted to know what you think over that spread of time has been accomplished, what gains have been made through your own work, from others, and what is left to do?
Flanagan: So I didn’t have a teacher who looked like me until I was in college and I walked into Indigenous Culture and History 101, and I saw Dr. Brenda Child. It changed everything for me. I suddenly became a sponge. I took graduate-level coursework for fun, and it meant so much to have someone who understood where I came from, and my identity, at the front of the room. So I know what a difference that makes to achievements when we have more teachers who reflect the students that they teach. And I think that we have seen more teachers that are now going through the pipeline. We have additional programs, and I think that that matters and it’s an important investment.
The memorandum of agreement that was signed into law by the Minneapolis Board of Education when I was a member in 2006 was really powerful. That has been redone several times. But I also think we absolutely have more work to do. Indigenous Education for All is a policy that was passed that is now being implemented. All of our young people, native and non-native, should know the history of whose land they live on, and I think it’s a benefit to everyone. I think that’s something that Gov. Walz and I absolutely, absolutely share.
But there’s more to do, and the thing that I think is incredibly important that we don’t talk about enough is the actual relationship between a teacher and a student. That is where the magic happens, and that is where the work gets done. And that has been my own educational experience, and I think that is where we have to do more investing. One of the things I am incredibly excited about is the BARR (Building Assets, Reducing Risks) initiative. And I don’t know how many of you are familiar with that, but the BARR program is in several schools across the country. It is something that works in blue states and red states, blue communities and red communities, and is all about making sure that our young people, our students, are supported by their teachers. It essentially forms a net so that nobody can fall through the cracks. The rates of attendance go way up. Kids who are falling behind, that number goes way down. We’re seeing results.
We’re seeing results in communities like Detroit Lakes, which have a high number of Native students. Those gaps are closing. We should invest in the things that we know work. We have had several pilots in this program across the state, and it’s something I’m really excited about, and I think can help. Incidentally, and this is not why I like the program, but it was started by my high school guidance counselor, who absolutely is why I went to college. And so I see, again, just the value of how powerful it is to focus on those relationships and allow teachers to be able to do their job and teach and make those connections.
Callaghan: I’ve only been here 10 years, but can still say I was surprised that there is a relatively popular song by Jeremy Messersmith that is essentially a Paul Wellstone stump speech. Explain to the uninitiated why Wellstone has become such an icon of DFL politics in Minnesota. What is the Wellstone Triangle?
Flanagan: Oh, this is like a quiz. I know what the Wellstone triangle is. I don’t know about you, but I feel Paul so much right now in this moment that we are experiencing in this country. I was going to be an early childhood special education teacher, and then in my senior year of college at the U, I worked for Sen. Wellstone and everything changed. I ended up, at the end of the campaign, leading our urban Native organizing work. All these folks who saw something in me that I didn’t necessarily see in myself gave me lots of opportunities to organize, lots of opportunities to work on campaigns to start training. That training is where I met our now-governor Tim Walz. It’s the magic of people feeling connected to something that’s bigger than themselves.
Paul represented so many of us, but he was our guy, right? He was an honorary member of Red Lake and Leech Lake. We don’t give that up to just anybody, right? And it’s because he showed up. And one of my favorite things about Paul Wellstone is that people wouldn’t always agree with him. But people are like, “Oh, son of a gun, I just really like that guy,” right? And that was the magic of Sen. Wellstone, because he would show up and he would listen to people, and folks just really felt valued and heard.
Now so many of us who grew up on the Wellstone for Senate campaign are now lieutenant governors, including Garlin Gilchrist II of Michigan, our mayors like Melvin Carter, or our graduates of Camp Wellstone, like our next vice president Tim Walz.
I remember, after he passed away, I had this dream. Like many of us, I was heartbroken. I can’t believe I’m telling this story. But in this dream, he was under a “doctor was in” sign, like one of those signs from the Peanuts, Lucy. And I said, “What do we do? What are we gonna do?” And he said, “Just keep going forward. Just keep going.” I think about that now. So many of us just kept going. And even under the darkest times of the Trump presidency, we were called to just keep going.
OK, the Wellstone triangle. I didn’t forget. So the Wellstone triangle – it’s what he showed us, which is that it was good public policy, strong community organizations and electoral politics. When politics works well, or when we have a movement that works well, all three of those things are working together because you have elected officials who come from those grassroots organizations, who run for office, who are still in relationship with those organizations, as they are passing and moving policy that is informed and good for people’s lives. So that is the Wellstone triangle.
Callaghan: I was interested in reading about your first session as head of the MN Children’s Defense Fund, especially on increasing the state minimum wage and indexing it to inflation. That is the first place I noticed a theme of your strategy toward poverty – increasing family incomes as much as broadening programs – that reappears in the budgets and policies of you and Tim Walz – universal school lunch, child tax credit, child care help, the first MFIP increase since 1986. Explain the relationship between higher incomes and higher outcomes.
Flanagan: So thank you for our tagline, which is, when you increase family income, you improve child outcomes, which is just true, because…data.
It was through (Children’s Defense Fund) that as a kid with a different colored lunch ticket, I was able to sit up straight, take up space and feel a real responsibility for family economic security for families all across Minnesota. You know, working on a minimum wage was one of the most important things that I have ever done in my life. We had a DFL House, Senate and governor’s office, and we had to fight to keep indexing attached to the minimum wage. And thank goodness we did, right? Because it was $6.15 at the time. It’s now $10.65 and we have more to do there.
What I know is that all of those programs help us not just strengthen Minnesota’s economy, but also create a future where kids and their families have opportunity. Having those two generation strategies is what sets Minnesota apart and makes us unique as we talk about making Minnesota the best place in the country to raise a family. I felt so privileged to be able to do that. But it also was good organizing work. It was over 70 organizations, faith, labor and nonprofits, working together to move this policy, and then that built the infrastructure for so much of the work that we were able to just get done in 2023 and 2024 – things like paid family and medical leave. That coalition launched when I still had a baby on my hip, and we passed it when my kid was 10 years old, right?
Callaghan: Why did the 2013 trifecta – with much larger House and Senate majorities (12 seats and 11 seats, respectively) – underperform how it did? And do you think that history colored the current DFL majorities?
Flanagan: I think in that moment (in 2013), Democrats were playing not to lose instead of playing to win. I think many of us who were advocates during that time are now decision makers. codifying access to abortion, paid family and medical leave, historic investments in infrastructure and education, a child tax credit, these are all things that we told people we were going to do. So we should probably do them and honor that commitment that we made to people in the community.
The other thing that I would say is – a one-seat majority – what’s a one-seat majority? A majority. That’s right. Gov. Walz often says that you have political capital so you can spend it, not just to bank it. And we wanted to run as hard and as fast as we could to get things done for Minnesotans, and we were able to do that. I’m really proud of that, proud of that work.
We also have governed when we’ve had a trifecta and when we haven’t. And I think Minnesotans just expect us to get work done and to work across the aisle together, regardless of who is in power. When I was at CDF (Children’s Defense Fund), that was a really important lesson for me, which is that two years in the life of a child was a really long time. And so if I needed to work with a Republican Speaker of the House and Republican members, I was going to do that because our kids needed it, frankly. For the first many years of our term, we had divided government, and we still got things done for Minnesotans, because that’s what all of you expect.
Callaghan: Let’s take a step back … It is late 2017 and you are in the state House, in the minority, considering a run for Congress should Keith Ellison do something else. Then this guy from Mankato (Gov. Walz) comes calling with a different political proposition. Describe that meeting – or perhaps series of meetings. And secondly, did your friends think you were crazy? Because he was not the top choice of Twin Cities progressives.
Flanagan: So Tim Walz and I’ve been friends for a long time. He was my camper at Camp Wellstone. I was his trainer in 2005. He walked into the room and jeans and a T-shirt and tennis shoes, and was like “I’m Tim Walz, and I want to run for Congress in the First Congressional District.” And I was like, “As a Democrat? OK, good luck.” By the end of the training, I was like, “Who is this guy?” And I went down to Mankato and I knocked on doors in a community where I didn’t live, because I believed so much in him. So we’ve been friends for a long time.
In 2017 he was like, “Hey, I would love to come talk to you about the things that you’re working on,” family, medical leave and childcare. I was like, “Oh, that’s my love language.” We’re in my office in the state office building, and he’s like, “I also want to talk to you about my pick for lieutenant governor.” I was like, “Great, I have some ideas. I have a list.” He was like, “It’s you.” And I was like, “Shut up. Well, now this conversation has turned explicitly political and we can’t have it here in the State Office Building. You have to go.” But I also said, “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
I was starting my career in the Legislature, and was really hopeful about what would be possible there, and it was a risk to join the ticket. but I also thought about the benefits. We did something very different, which was launching our campaign a full year before Election Day, because we wanted people to know what they were going to get right. You’ve got this veteran from the National Guard with over 20 years of service, a coach, a teacher, someone who represented the ninth-largest agricultural district in the country, and then a suburban mom, nonprofit executive, a native woman and organizer and advocate – and I thought this is something that Minnesotans can really get behind and see themselves reflected in our leadership. And it wasn’t lost on me that we hadn’t had a native woman in this role before, and that was also important. What a ride. What an adventure. It was absolutely worth the risk.
Callaghan: You might be the next governor of Minnesota – I mean this year, not after the 2026 election. I know you don’t want to go there, but there will be no campaign, no vetting, no vote, no choice.
Don’t residents deserve some description of how their state and their government might look different – or the same – if you become their governor?
Flanagan: I think that over the last six years, working literally shoulder to shoulder with Gov. Walz, has demonstrated for Minnesotans how I think about leadership and priorities. We literally have a table in the governor’s office where the governor and I sit side by side at the head of the table. We have interviewed and hired all of our commissioners together. The overwhelming majority of the judges and people that we have appointed, we have done so together. And, whenever we put together our budget and policies, we are side by side. And it might not surprise you to know that I like to really get in the weeds of a lot of those policies. I’m a policy nerd. That has been the work that I’ve done, and the training ground, frankly, for whatever might be next.
The things that I think about a lot, regardless of what my job will be in 2025, is implementation of all of the things that we just got done. I care tremendously about good governance. It is not a sexy thing to talk about, but it really, really matters, and it really matters in this moment, in particular, where we are so divided and there’s so much distrust. I think about family medical leave, which is an entire program that we have to build, and the goal of that is to make sure that a new parent who comes home with a baby, who’s totally freaked out, I want that new mom to come home and as she is totally overwhelmed with this amazing baby that she doesn’t have to think at all about whether or not there’s going to be money in her bank account to pay her bills. It’s a tall order, but it also is what is expected for us.
I will absolutely do everything I can to introduce more Minnesotans to their lieutenant governor and to talk about the work that I’ve been able to do in partnership with Gov. Walz. But I can tell you this one difference between us: I’ve got more hair and he’s taller.
Callaghan: OK, final question. How much buffalo plaid do you have? Wolfe Clan tartan?
Flanagan: I do actually like buffalo plaid. The governor brought me a buffalo plaid Pendleton jacket so that we could be twinsies and I love it.
Winter Keefer
Winter Keefer is MinnPost’s Metro reporter. Follow her on Twitter or email her at wkeefer@minnpost.com.
