“At my core, I’ll always be the kid from the trailer park,” says U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, who is running for one of Minnesota’s two U.S. Senate seats. “I have a theory that you don’t move very far from where you begin, even if you, outwardly, get really lucky and do. So I’ve always been someone who, as a member of Congress, has been fighting for economic opportunity and good jobs and lowering costs for people.”

Craig, whose father was largely absent during her childhood, was raised along with her younger brother and sister by her mother and grandmother in Arkansas. The family, who lived in a mobile home, moved to several small towns throughout the state before finally settling near Jonesboro, a city located about 60 miles from Memphis, Tennessee, when Craig was in seventh grade.

“My mom was a single mom for most of my childhood,” she says. “At times, we didn’t have health insurance, and at times, we needed a little bit of help in the form of nutrition assistance. I had the experience watching my mom go to college at night to get her teaching degree for probably nine years. So my siblings and I had really strong role models, women, in our lives, who were determined that they were going to give their kids a better life.”

As a teenager, Craig worked two jobs and took out student loans to attend the University of Memphis, where she earned a degree in journalism and served as editor of the student newspaper. After graduation, she landed an internship, and ultimately, a job, as a full-time general assignment reporter for The Commercial Appeal, a Memphis-based daily newspaper. She later moved into corporate communications, working for a medical technology manufacturing company before being recruited by the medical device company St. Jude Medical — requiring her to relocate to Minnesota, the state she now represents in Congress.

The out lesbian congresswoman casts herself as a workhorse rather than a “showhorse” during her four terms in office, introducing 13 bills that have been signed into law — despite Congress’s reputation as an institution that prizes gridlock over legislative productivity.

While “affordability” is the political buzzword of 2026 — even for politicians and consultants whose newfound economic populism bears little resemblance to their past voting records, pro-business advocacy, or reputations as cultural warriors — Craig argues that she’s been at the forefront of the affordability movement, pushing for worker-friendly policies since the start of her political career.

“The working class and the middle class in this country is being decimated by policies that favor the ultra-wealthy in our nation,” Craig says. “The shifting of wealth and the widening of the wealth gap in this country is something that should concern us all. And at this moment in time, with [President Donald] Trump’s tariffs, with the war in Iran, with the attack on the nation’s healthcare by not extending the ACA tax credits, people are really struggling out there.”

Craig says there’s a sweeping feeling among many Americans that the political system is irreparably broken or rigged in favor of special interests that enrich themselves while doing nothing to improve people’s material well-being.

“We have a systemic failure in this country, and for me, it’s about: how do we restore confidence in the people who represent us to the American people?” she says.

Part of the answer, she argues, is for political parties — preferably, in her view, the Democratic Party — to deliver on past promises to voters and wield power decisively when they control the levers of government. Another solution, she says, is for leaders to be willing to buck the status quo and take action rather than ask permission — something Craig did when she successfully challenged the late U.S. Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), a 12-term veteran of the House, for the position of ranking member on the powerful House Agriculture Committee. Scott eventually dropped out of the internal Democratic Caucus contest, allowing Craig to defeat eleven-term Congressman Jim Costa (D-Calif.) in a head-to-head matchup.

“Personally, I think we need more disruption in the Democratic Party,” the 54-year-old congresswoman says.

Craig also posits that Democrats can’t be focused solely on intraparty battles if they’re serious about providing an actual check on Trump’s power. And that requires focusing their efforts on defeating Republicans at the ballot box.

Even though her chief primary opponent has racked up endorsements from some of the country’s most visible leftists — including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), whose pending retirement created a vacancy for the seat that she is running for –- Craig argues that she is the candidate best positioned to win the general election.

“We have to do everything we can to take back the majority in the Senate,” she says. “I am best prepared, I believe, to beat the Republican who ends up on the other side in this U.S. Senate race, because that’s the only way we stop Donald Trump, it’s the only way we stop Republicans. And make no mistake about it: Minnesota is a swing state. So we have to make sure that we hold this U.S. Senate seat if we are going to even have a shot at taking the Senate majority.”

METRO WEEKLY: Let’s start with your coming out experience. Who was the first person you told, and what was their reaction?

ANGIE CRAIG: I guess that coming out process for me was a little bit more like just realizing that this is who I was and who I was going to be for the rest of my life. As a young teenager in the late 1980s, I had that experience of growing up in a place where I didn’t feel like I could live openly as myself. I couldn’t get out of that small town fast enough, but I also couldn’t afford to go far. So I left to go to college in Memphis, which was the biggest town I could get to as fast as I possibly could. And then, I finally came out to my parents in college.

Funny enough, I told my dad first. My dad was absent for a lot of our childhood, but in college, we reconnected. And over the years, we’ve had a lot of conversations about forgiveness for what happened in our childhood. And I think I told my dad first because my mom and grandmother had raised me, and I was afraid to lose them by coming out. I wasn’t as afraid with my dad. My dad was very accepting.

With my mom and grandmother, it was a little tough. The most hilarious thing is my mom was most afraid that she wouldn’t get grandchildren, and the irony of it is my wife and I have four sons, and she’s got her fourth great-grandson on the way right now. So I don’t know, the lesbian daughter produced more children and grandchildren for her than any of my siblings.

Every young person who comes out goes through that period of questioning, “Does the person that loves me the most, will they still love me when I tell them that I’m different?” And I do think in the ’80s and ’90s, obviously, it was a little different. Today, there’s a lot more understanding of the LGBTQ community, although, obviously, we have a long way to go in parts of our communities for full acceptance.

MW: You and your wife have an interesting story about how you met and formed your family.

CRAIG: Like many families, my wife and I have a blended family. She had another partner before we met, and so did I. So my former partner and I adopted one child, and I, through artificial insemination, had our youngest son. And my wife had both of her sons through artificial insemination.

With our oldest son, Josh, who’s now 28 years old and a dad himself, his birth mom chose us to be his parents, but his birth grandparents contested the adoption on the basis of a number of things, but one of those reasons –- and this was in Tennessee — was that we were clearly lesbians and together.

That was a tough battle. I’ve often said that running for Congress, running for public office is hard, but the biggest battle that I ever faced in my life was when Josh came to live with us when he was four months old. It was probably two-and-a-half years before we knew that we were going to be able to keep him and raise him as ours.

And for that period of time, I helped raise my son, and put him to bed every single night, not knowing whether or not he would be with us the next day. When you go through something like that, when you live with that level of uncertainty about something that you love the most, it certainly creates an imprint on you, and it has a lifelong impact. So I always say no matter what happens, I’ve already been through the hardest thing.

Your readers can look that custody case up. There’s some really harsh language in it from one of the judges who ruled in that case about whether or not it’s in the best interest of any child to be raised by gay parents. But we won, and that case is now taught in Tennessee as one of the test cases for lesbians’ right to adopt.

My son is so proud that he is that kid in that case. That experience has certainly impacted my life, and it has made me even more committed to bills that I’ve worked on, like the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, which I worked on with the late [U.S. Rep.] John Lewis, trying to pass laws that would prohibit discrimination in adoption across our nation, because we all know that there are states in this country — including in Tennessee, where I had to fight — that discriminate against same-sex parents. That fight is not done.

MW: Just to clarify, you adopted and underwent artificial insemination with your first partner, and then had the blended family when you married your wife, correct?

CRAIG: That’s correct. My wife and I met through our kids. She was a middle school teacher and a basketball coach in Minnesota for many, many years before I met her, and she decided to coach her seven-year-old son’s basketball team. But she actually had her eye on my six-year-old, who could dribble with both hands. So he was a terrific point guard, and so she recruited my six-year-old to play for her little peewee basketball team. So that’s our love origin story, and it just kind of grew from there.

MW: When did you two marry?

CRAIG: We were married in 2008 in California. California, of course, was one of the first states to legalize same-sex marriage. We actually had a second ceremony marking our five-year anniversary here in Minnesota, after Minnesota passed marriage equality. The first time we had our wedding, it was just with our family and one or two friends in California. But the second time, we were able to invite all of our friends, because we had fought so hard to make marriage by same-sex couples legal here in Minnesota.

MW: Was your marriage nullified for a time because of Proposition 8?

CRAIG: It was. It was really surreal in 2008, on the night Barack Obama became president, because we had been married in California in October, and we were one of the 18,000 couples caught up when Proposition 8 passed. Of course, we didn’t know whether our marriage would still stand at that point in time. And there was also no legal requirement to even acknowledge, under the law, our marriage in many other states across this country. We were married in Minnesota in 2013 after marriage equality passed here, and then, of course, it wasn’t until 2015 when the Supreme Court ruled that our marriage was actually the law across this country.

MW: What motivated you to jump into the political arena?

CRAIG: In 2012, when I was on the leadership team at St. Jude Medical, there was a constitutional amendment placed on the ballot that would have banned same-sex marriage in Minnesota.

I’d never personally become engaged or involved in politics or organizing. But the marriage equality campaign changed all that. I helped lead the effort among Fortune 500 companies on that effort to defeat that constitutional amendment that would’ve banned same-sex marriage. I’m proud that the company that I helped lead was the first publicly traded Fortune 500 company to come out in opposition to that constitutional amendment. And then, of course, Democrats took the trifecta, the governor’s residence, the House, and the Senate, in the 2012 campaign. We also defeated that constitutional amendment. And then, we flipped the script, and the very next year, passed marriage equality in Minnesota. So that’s really where I was able to see what good people coming together to fight for what’s right in this country, this idea of political organizing looked like, and I was hooked.

When Donald Trump came onto the scene in 2016, and I saw that our politics — at least,for so many of us who felt marginalized in our communities –- were under attack by Republicans, I decided that I was going to run for Congress in a congressional district that had been in Republican hands for three-quarters of a century.

Minnesota’s 2nd congressional district leaned Republican by about two or three percentage points when I first ran. But the congressman in office had won by, I believe, 22 points in his last election. I announced that I was going to challenge him for that seat. He ultimately decided to retire that election cycle, instead of moving forward. And in my first race for Congress, I didn’t win, but we cut down the margin. I lost that race by under two percentage points.

Of course, Donald Trump won the presidency. Donald Trump also won my congressional district. And from there, I just couldn’t go back to the sidelines. I absolutely had to stay in this fight for the heart and soul of our nation, and so I kept going. And in 2018, I flipped this seat that had been in Republican hands for three-quarters of a century.

I’m the first Democrat in history to hold this district for more than two terms. I’m the first woman to represent it. And I’m so proud that the first congressional member, who is also a member of the LGBTQ community, came from a slightly Republican district in Minnesota. I think that speaks to the effort and the progress that we’ve made.

Of course, we’ve been pushed back, particularly the trans community at this moment in time. But I’m proud to be able to represent the 2nd District. I’m proud of my family. I’ve never hesitated to talk openly about my family, and I do it in exactly the same way that any other politician would — with my wife, Cheryl, and our four sons, and now three grandsons.

MW: Based on your experience in the corporate sphere, what’s your take on former so-called “corporate allies” dropping support for the LGBTQ community and distancing themselves from DEI to curry favor with the Trump administration?

CRAIG: Well, I think most businesses completely understand that in order to run their business, they need to be able to recruit and retain the best people, and many of the best people also happen to be from the LGBTQ+ community. And so, they understand that having policies that promote inclusion is good business. And there are plenty of studies that show the companies that are more inclusive actually perform better in the industries and sectors in which they compete.

On the other hand, I think we are in an environment where it’s not just corporations, it’s my Republican colleagues and everyone else in between, who are afraid of retribution from the Trump administration. I’m disappointed that businesses don’t push back harder in making the case, because this is exactly the case that we were making in 2012, in defeating the constitutional amendment in Minnesota. When I would call fellow heads of HR across Minnesota, I would make the point that we have to have the best people, and that this is really good for business, and that hiring the best talent means we all need to demonstrate that we’re the kinds of companies that are going to promote inclusion.

We know Donald Trump is not coming back for a third term, that he will be gone in a little more than two years. But the nastiness that he has brought to the White House is at risk of continuing in the next Republican administration. So I wish businesses would have more guts to stand up and speak truth to power. Because as much as they’re afraid to do that, the business community has enormous influence with Americans and with their consumers. I just think we’re at a time where businesses don’t want to piss off the left or the right, and so that leads to a certain level of weakness that frankly means no one respects them.

MW: One of the things we’re seeing right now is this overwhelming sense of anger, not only from an insurgent left, but even among so-called “normie Dems” and from people who would have been labeled “Resistance liberals” in Trump 1.0. The criticism we hear repeatedly is that the far left-wing candidates are the only people speaking to their needs or concerns. Doesn’t the party bear some responsibility for not addressing that anger?

CRAIG: Well, look, I’m going to be candid, I’m pissed off at Democrats, too. As I look at Congress right now, often my colleagues are just trying to outlive each other to get to the next gavel. I mean, Democrats have, what, 50 members over 75 years old? I think seven of the last eight folks to die in office were Democrats, on the House side. We do have a problem in the Democratic Party of gerontology, and not recognizing that people are really sick of the way the system has been running.

The fact that Democrats had the majority for four years and we didn’t pass a ban on stock trading, which was actually my first bill when I came to Congress, pisses me off. I think we should have term limits for committee leadership so that people don’t hang around for 40 years to try to get the next gavel. So I don’t blame people for being angry.

There’s also a sense among people of “those of you in Washington aren’t fighting the administration hard enough.” Well, what I would say is the only way we win that fight is by winning elections.

My thoughts on the ideological spectrum of the Democratic Party are that I welcome anybody into the Democratic Party who is here to help us beat Republicans. I think we have to be careful, though, that we’re not spending more time tearing down Democrats than we are actually focusing on beating Republicans.

I serve with a caucus that has a massive ideological spectrum among us. I’m not sure that where you stand on the ideological spectrum is nearly as important as it used to be, or nearly as descriptive or definitive of what you’ll do in office as it used to be. I mean, folks would call me a centrist, and yet I helped co-found the Anti-Monopoly Caucus with Pramila Jayapal, who was the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

What I think people are just tired of is leadership not being bold and not doing things that they can see change the system.

I’ll give you an example. When I came back from my 2024 election, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I each challenged committee leadership. She challenged the ranking member of the Oversight Committee at that time, and I challenged the ranking member of the Agricultural Committee at the time. I was fortunate enough to run against two men who had been in Congress for decades, and I won the top job. I jumped out of line, jumping over 20-plus people on the committee, from a seniority perspective, to win the job of ranking member on one of the largest committees in Congress. I think that people want to see some disruption in the Democratic Party, and they want to see some disruption of the same-old, same-old in Washington, and until we deliver that, I think this anger [at the party] is going to prevail.

And that means leadership has got to get behind some of these changes that people are asking for. We need to ban gerrymandering in this country so that we don’t have to have a shootout between Texas and California on who’s going to gerrymander the most districts. We need to fix the campaign finance system, either by a constitutional amendment to end [the U.S. Supreme Court decision in] Citizens United, or additional [disclosure] laws that would create transparency and dissuade big corporations from participating in the political super PAC process. The insider trading we’ve seen by members of Congress should be illegal. These are the kinds of things, I think, that people are clamoring for.

MW: One of the other underreported aspects of some of these successful primary challenges this cycle is that some of those incumbents who have lost have been criticized by some as “absentee” members who haven’t accomplished much in office or have “gone Washington.” How do you, currently, as a House member — and how will you, as senator — make sure that you stay in touch with your constituents enough to avoid fueling those feelings of distrust and resentment that voters may have toward elected officials?

CRAIG: Well, look, I think that can only happen in a safe seat, where people get lazy and don’t fly back and stay on the ground with people. You think about every one of these primaries, most of the folks are in very, very safe seats. I’ve been a frontliner the entire time that I’ve been in Congress, a seat that either leaned Republican by two points or Democrat by a few points. Now, it leans Democrat by three, so my seat’s been slowly moving. But that means I have to come home every weekend. I can count on one hand the number of weekends, in eight years, that I’ve actually spent in Washington, D.C.

For the first six or seven years, I did a town hall every single month of my tenure. And frankly, in a swing seat — and I think this is a key point –- you actually have to get out of your “blue bubble” and go meet with people who are not just in your own party. Those town halls enabled me to do that. I regularly get out of my blue bubble and I talk to people who aren’t going to agree with me on maybe 90% of issues, but what they appreciate about me is that I show up and I listen to what their concerns are. We’ll never agree on reproductive rights with these people, or maybe we won’t agree on LGBTQ issues. But if you sit down with someone face-to-face, I guarantee a Democrat can find 10% to 20% of agreement with a Republican on economic issues, because the issues for these Republican families who can’t afford their gas or their groceries are no different than they are for Democratic families.

And what I’ve learned over the years is that just by sitting down and listening to them, you earn some trust. Most of these people who disagree with you are still going to vote against you. And I often lead a conversation by saying, “Hey, I know almost everybody in this room is going to vote against me, but so be it. I still want to meet with you.” And 2024 is instructive, because in my D+3 district, I won by 14 percentage points. And the biggest outperformance in my district came from the rural areas, and that’s because farming gives me that entrée to talk to Republican-leaners and independents about those issues that matter most to them. So 5% to 9% of those folks may forgive the fact that I’m endorsed by Planned Parenthood and the League of Conservation Voters, and will vote for me anyway. That’s how you outperform.

When you talk about these ideological differences, it matters more that we have the right candidates running in the right districts and the right states. I’m running in a Senate primary right now where I’ve voted with Democrats in Congress 96% of the time. In this primary, I’m being attacked for the 4% I voted against the party line. I can guarantee you in the general election, I will be attacked by Republicans for voting with Democrats. So that’s the irony here. But I think the bottom line is we need to put the right candidates in the right spots so that we can just win, if we want to put a check and balance on Donald Trump.

MW: When you look at exit polls and how working-class people have voted over the past two-and-a-half decades, Democrats have generally lost that group of Americans, often by double digits, in elections. Why do you think Democrats have lost the trust of working people?

CRAIG: It’s a great question. I’ve been endorsed by 14 unions in my U.S. Senate race, and so I spend a lot of time inside labor circles. Minnesota’s a very strong union state, so I have that opportunity. And while Democrats lead publicly on labor issues, and we’re better on protecting the right to organize and collectively bargaining, we’re still losing if labor union leaders are quietly telling me that sometimes 40 to 50 percent of their members are voting for Republicans.

Look, there’s a reason why the fastest-growing political affiliation in this country is no affiliation or independent. I think voters are frustrated that neither party, when they’ve held the power, has been able to get anything done that they see as helping to improve their lives.

Think about it: the federal minimum wage is still just over $7 an hour. We can’t even pass the federal minimum wage when Democrats are in charge. I think that the working class in this country views the Democratic Party, increasingly, as the party of the elite, and I think there are times when we have sounded very much like we’re lecturing them instead of listening to them.

I think we’ve got to get back to the basics with working folks in this country. Their biggest concerns are economic opportunity. Their biggest concerns are the cost of housing or rent, health care, child care, and the cost of groceries. And I think their perception — be it reality or not –- is that the Democratic Party has focused on issues that they do not see as central to their lives. If you want to win over a voter, you’ve got to demonstrate that you’re focused on the issues that they care most about, not just in your rhetoric, but in what you do when you get into power.

MW: One of the things that you’re being attacked over, certainly in the primary, is your vote for the Laken Riley Act, and it’s been reported that you have since said that you regret that vote. What specifically do you regret about that vote?

CRAIG: I regret giving the Trump administration an additional inch when it comes to immigration enforcement in this country. The bill itself, when you read it, was about detention of individuals who commit crimes. But when the Trump administration sent 4,000 agents into Minnesota under Operation Metro Surge, they weren’t following any laws. It was a lawless federal masked enforcement agency. So I don’t believe that the Laken Riley Act has anything to do with what happened here, but I regret giving the administration an inch, and I’ve said openly that that regret will propel me, for the rest of my political career, to do everything in my power to stand up to Trump and Republicans’ idea of immigration enforcement, and to be more resolute on pushing for, advocating for, and leading on comprehensive immigration reform for our country.

Look, I’m not afraid to say when I screw up. I know that my voters have always expected me to be honest with them, and I’ve done it even when it’s hard. That’s why I penned an op-ed explaining why I voted for the bill in the first place and expressing that I do regret that vote.

MW: How should ICE or immigration enforcement be reformed? Because we’ve heard from Americans, and even from members of immigrant communities, when they’re interviewed on the street by news outlets or podcasters: “I want enforcement, I want borders, I want safety. But I don’t necessarily want a masked police force running around the streets.”

CRAIG: I haven’t, and I won’t vote for a damn penny of funding to Trump’s ICE until we achieve many of the following efforts: One, take the damn mask off. You don’t have to put your name on your shirt, but we need to have a way to identify you, whether that’s a reference number or some other form of identification, where we can know what agent is doing what out there. ICE agents need to be held to the same standards as local law enforcement. You can’t profile my Black and Brown neighbors across Minnesota when you’re conducting your activities. You need a warrant from a judge to come and detain someone.

So this is just the start of what I believe. By the way, I also have been into a number of detention facilities now, and I’m not voting for a penny for this agency until we also have a level of humanitarian and medical operations inside these facilities.

MW: You’re known as a member of the Congressional Equality Caucus, and a longtime LGBTQ advocate. But we’ve seen Republicans, in recent cycles, use any form of support for the LGBTQ community — certainly trans rights, but even, more recently, marriage equality and same-sex parenting — to attack politicians as radical or out of touch. Do you expect to be attacked both for your identity, and for your positions on LGBTQ issues? If so, how will you stand up to such attacks?

CRAIG: Well, I’ll start by saying that I have full confidence in the people of Minnesota, that they will reject Republicans’ attacks on our neighbors, including our trans neighbors. Minnesotans understand this issue of fairness. What I will also say is, absolutely, I expect Republicans to attack me, likely on my family, likely on my support for the LGBTQ community, and especially the trans community. And my response to that is: Bring it on.

U.S. Rep. Angie Craig is the representative for Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District and a candidate for the U.S. Senate. For more information on her campaign, visit her website at angiecraig.com.

Follow her on Instagram or Threads at @angiecraigmn.