Washington News: Senate Campaign Controversy

So, Peggy, are you possibly overlooking someone important?

In a recent email highlight from Democratic Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s Senate campaign, her bid was framed as a historic opportunity to be the first Native American woman in the U.S. Senate following her primary win on Tuesday.

“In nearly 250 years, no Native American woman has served in the U.S. Senate. It’s definitely time for a change,” the email claimed. “I’m Peggy Flanagan, the Democratic Senate candidate for Minnesota.”

She proudly mentions, “I am Ojibwe and a proud member of the White Earth Nation.”

However, some sharp critics, with a good memory, pointed out that maybe Flanagan had overlooked Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has faced a fair amount of ridicule for her claims of Cherokee ancestry leading up to and after the 2012 election.

Warren, who hails from Oklahoma, contributed recipes to a Native American cookbook back in 1984 and referred to herself as Cherokee. Just two years later, she labeled herself an “American Indian” on a Texas State Bar survey.

Between 1995 and 2004, Warren was listed as Native American on federal Affirmative Action forms by Harvard Law School, although she later claimed she was unaware of that designation.

After Trump won the 2016 presidential election, he repeatedly mocked Warren with the name “Pocahontas,” at one point even offering to contribute $1 million to a charity if she could verify her ancestry and eventually goaded her into taking a DNA test.

In 2018, as she eyed a presidential run, Warren released a study from Stanford University professor Carlos D. Bustamante asserting she had Native American ancestry “within six to ten generations.”

But, as some geneticists noted, the findings had issues because genetic databases didn’t adequately represent Native American lineage. Bustamante himself indicated that Warren should have suggested she had “potential” Native American ancestry rather than assert it definitively.

The Cherokee Nation criticized Warren’s actions as “inappropriate and wrong,” leading her to issue an apology in early 2019.

It’s worth noting that historically, there have been four Native American male senators, including Mark Wayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma) and Robert Owen from the Oklahoma Democratic Party. Charles Curtis (R-Kansas) even served as vice president during the Herbert Hoover administration, alongside Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.).