BURNSVILLE, Minn. – Angie Craig is gearing up for a second run against incumbent Rep. Jason Lewis in a bid to represent Minnesota’s Second Congressional District.
Craig announced her decision in a Facebook post Monday, saying she had strong support from her wife and four sons in making the decision to run again.
“As Democrats, we must understand better why we have lost these past elections,” Craig wrote in the post. “As I talk with voters, already it has become clearer that we must talk more about how we are going to bring back jobs to the United States and create economic opportunity for more hard-working Americans.”
Craig won 45.2 percent of the vote against Lewis’ 47 percent in 2016. Independence Party candidate Paula Overby took 7.8 percent.
Craig has also been a presence at townhalls put on by groups such as Indivisible, which Lewis has not attended. In May, Craig and gubernatorial candidate and First District Rep. Tim Walz headlined one such town hall, with Overby also in attendance.
In her career Craig has worked as a journalist and in the healthcare industry as an executive at Fortune 500 company St. Jude Medical. That medical experience is something Lewis’s spokesman Stephen Bradford was sure to highlight in a statement.
“Minnesota families have already seen through Angie Craig, and her profiteering off the ACA’s huge premium hikes is yet another example of how she’s wrong for the district,” Bradford wrote. “The 2nd district deserves better than Bernie Sanders-style Democrats, but after the DFL is done fighting over who’s more liberal, Jason Lewis will still be standing up for our families and getting things done.”
In 2016 Craig won the DFL primary unopposed. This year she is already the second member of her party to announce her intent to challenge Lewis. Rosemount High School teacher and football coach Jeff Erdmann announced his candidacy at the end of May, and he believes healthcare is a human right.
