Peggy Flanagan continues to make history in her bid to become the first Native woman to serve in the U.S. Senate.

Flanagan, a citizen of the White Earth Nation, easily won the Democratic primary for an open Senate seat in Minnesota. She secured 59 percent of the vote on Tuesday, according to unofficial results, and delivered a rousing victory speech to supporters who gathered in Minneapolis for the historic occasion.

“I am the daughter of Marvin Manypenny, an Ojibwe activist who was always ready to get into good trouble for a good cause,” Flanagan said to applause at the historic First Avenue nightclub in the city’s downtown. “And our clan is the Wolf Clan, and the role of our clan is to leave no one behind.”

“I am the daughter,” Flanagan continued, fighting back tears as the crowd chanted her name. “I am the daughter of Pat Flanagan, an Irish Catholic care worker who skipped meals so that I could eat. She had a compassionate heart for everyone she met.”

Flanagan has already blazed trails as the first Native lieutenant governor of Minnesota, a state that’s home to 11 federally recognized Indian nations, including White Earth. She took office in January 2019 after serving four years in the Minnesota House of Representatives and after being the youngest person elected to the board of education in Minneapolis, which along with neighboring St. Paul is home to a large urban Indian population.

Flanagan is now closer to bringing her background as a progressive politician to the nation’s capital, where Democrats have been sidelined following the return of Donald Trump, a Republican, to the White House. Republicans currently control both chambers of the U.S. Congress, and lawmakers have quickly fallen in line with the GOP president on just about every issue, from violent immigration raids in Minnesota that harmed Native citizens to the desecration of sacred sites across Indian Country.

“They’re desperate to give Trump another ‘Yes, sir’ senator to do his bidding and another Republican truck full of ‘Yes, sir’ senators who will say, ‘Yes, sir’ to anything Donald Trump wants,” Flanagan said.

“And we are not going to give them a Republican majority, friends,” Flanagan continued, as supporters responded “No.”

“We’re not going to let them flip this seat. Minnesota’s going to be part of Democrats taking back the Senate, holding Donald Trump accountable and helping working people before billionaires and corporate special interests,” Flanagan asserted.

To win the Senate seat in Minnesota and help Democrats regain control of the chamber, Flanagan needs to defeat Michele Tafoya, a broadcast journalist who won the Republican primary with 52 percent of the vote on Tuesday. Tafoya has made combatting crime and fighting fraud key parts of her campaign, aligning herself with conservative positions shared by Trump — although so far she has not been endorsed by the president.

“Minnesota is going 100 miles an hour in the wrong direction after years of single-party rule,” Tafoya said in a news release on Tuesday night. “They’ve turned our state into a national embarrassment.”

“I love this state,” Tafoya added. “My husband and fell in love here, raised our family here, and built our lives here. I will not sit by and let the state we call home become a laughingstock.”

Democrats and two independents currently hold 47 seats in the Senate, including the seat being vacated by Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota). Smith, who serves on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, is retiring at the end of the 119th Congress, which is the current legislative session.

“To Senator Tina Smith: You have been one of my dearest mentors and friends for many years. You’ve shown Minnesota what it looks like to always put people first,” Flanagan said in her primary night speech.

Republicans, who hold 53 seats in the Senate, have used their majority to support Trump on a wide range of issues. Their control has affected everything from changes in funding promised to Indian Country programs to oversight of the executive branch, where Trump has tried to weaken and undermine the federal government’s trust and treaty obligations to tribal nations.

“You learn quickly what it takes to make real change in Washington: you need guts, smarts, and a whole lot of determination,” former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who was the first Native person to serve in a presidential cabinet, said when she endorsed Flanagan for the U.S. Senate.

“Peggy Flanagan embodies all these qualities — that’s why she’s been such an effective leader,” said Haaland, who is seeking to make history again in her own campaign for governor of New Mexico.

American Indians and Alaska Natives represent 1.7 percent of the population in Minnesota, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, the most populous region in the state, about 1.8 percent of the combined population is Native, according to the Census.

Flanagan is the first Native person in Minnesota to win statewide office. Few other Native women can claim a similar achievement but fellow Democrat Mary Peltola did so when she won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as Alaska’s sole member of that chamber. Peltola, who is Yup’ik, is now running for the U.S. Senate like Flanagan, raising the possibility of two Native women winning election to the chamber.

Minnesota’s Congressional delegation currently leans Democratic. Of the eight members of the House and two in the Senate, six are Democrats.

However, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) is running for governor of Minnesota — and she won her primary on Tuesday as well. Should she win the general election in November, she would resign from the U.S. Senate, leaving her seat open for another election.

In her primary night speech, Flanagan vowed to unite voters by “running a campaign that is grounded in people, our love for each other, for the state, for the common good.” As she closed her remarks with “Gitchi miigwech” — the Ojibwe expression for gratitude — she offered some characteristically frank encouragement to supporters.

“L.F.G.,” Flanagan said to cheers. “Let’s go.”

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