The daughter of American Indian land rights and sovereignty activist Marvin Manypenny, Flanagan was raised by a single mother, a phlebotomist, in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. She is a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. Flanagan received a bachelor's degree in child psychology and American Indian Studies from the University of Minnesota in 2002.
Career
Early career
While in college, Flanagan worked for the campaign of Democratic U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, eventually becoming an organizer for the urban Native American community. After college, she worked for the Council of Churches, doing outreach work between Native American families and the Minneapolis public school system. In her first run for elective office, Flanagan won a seat on the Minneapolis Board of Education in 2004. In a six-candidate field that featured two incumbents, the political newcomer Flanagan garnered the most votes. She was elected along with Lydia Lee and incumbent Sharon Henry-Blythe and served one term on the board, from 2005 to 2009. In 2008, she challenged State Representative Joe Mullery in the Democratic primary, but dropped out of the race due to her mother's health problems. After working in a handful of other jobs, Flanagan joined Wellstone Action as a trainer of activists, organizers, and candidates. Flanagan also advocated for the successful 2014 effort to raise Minnesota's minimum wage.
Flanagan was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives unopposed in a special election on November 3, 2015, and was sworn-in on November 9, 2015. Susan Allen and Republican Steve Green were the only other Natives in the Minnesota State House at that time. Three other Native women sought election to the Minnesota state legislature in November 2016: Mary Kelly Kunesh-Podein and Jamie Becker-Finn ran for state representative seats and Chilah Brown ran for the Minnesota Senate. Kunesh-Podein and Beck-Finn were elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives and assumed office in January 2017. In 2017, Flanagan, Allen, Kunesh-Podein and Beck-Finn formed the Minnesota House Native American Caucus to represent issues of both urban and rural Native Americans and their other constituents in the legislature.
Flanagan was invited to address the 2016 Democratic National Convention, speaking from the podium on July 28, 2016. She was the first Native American woman to address the DNC.
In 2017, she became a candidate for lieutenant governor, joining Congressman Tim Walz as their ticket won the DFL primary in the 2018 Minnesota gubernatorial election. In the general election, the pair defeated the Republican ticket of Jeff Johnson and Donna Bergstrom. With their victory, she became the first racial minority woman elected to statewide office in Minnesota as well as the second Native American woman elected to statewide executive office in the United States, after Denise Juneau.
Personal life
Flanagan has one daughter with her former husband, whom she divorced in 2017. Flanagan resides in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. On January 12, 2018, Flanagan revealed on her personal Facebook page that she was in a relationship with the Minnesota Public Radio News host Tom Weber; MPR News announced that day that it was reassigning Weber and that he would no longer cover "the governor’s race, the Legislature, potential legislation, public policy involving the executive or legislative branches or any topic related to the November 2018 election." Flanagan married Weber in September 2019. On March 22, 2020, Flanagan revealed on her Instagram account that her brother Ron, who lived in Tennessee, died of a COVID-19 related illness, stating “To many, he’ll be a statistic: Tennessee’s second COVID-related death. But to me, I’ll remember a loving, older brother, uncle, father, and husband.”
