Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman escalated a bitter dispute with Democratic congresswoman Angie Craig on Friday, alleging that her campaign sought his endorsement while he lay in intensive care recovering from a shooting that nearly killed him and his wife in June 2025.
The clash erupted at a campaign rally for Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, Hoffman's preferred Senate candidate, where he drew a sharp contrast between the two rivals competing for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. Hoffman said someone close to him, described as a "dear and trusted friend," approached him twice with endorsement requests on Craig's behalf: once while he was hospitalized and again during his recovery at home.
"When [Craig] said she wanted my endorsement, she was doing that during moments when our family's story had high visibility," Hoffman told the crowd in St. Paul, where Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was also present. He praised Flanagan for checking on his family "out of her love for how we were doing," contrasting her conduct with what he portrayed as Craig's opportunistic timing.
Craig's camp flatly rejected the assertion. "The claim is categorically false," her spokesperson said in a statement, insisting the congresswoman had only expressed sympathy following the shooting and did not reach out again until Aug. 5, after Hoffman had already begun endorsing other candidates.
Text messages the Craig campaign released to NBC News showed a June 14 message from Craig expressing well-wishes and an Aug. 5 text in which she wrote she "would love to talk with you about the open Senate race when you're up to it." Craig had also denied Hoffman's claims in a television interview, calling them false.
Hoffman fired back with a statement defending his account. "Let me be equally clear: I told the truth about what Yvette and I experienced," he wrote, referring to himself and his wife, who was shot alongside him. He argued that the Aug. 5 message itself proved the point: expressing condolences and then immediately requesting an endorsement showed poor judgment and left a painful impression on his recovering family.
Hoffman was discharged from intensive care on July 7. The identity of the intermediary who allegedly made the endorsement pitches has not been independently confirmed, though state Sen. Erin Maye Quade said Hoffman shared the story with her during a late-July visit to his rehabilitation facility.
"He had mentioned that there was a friend of his that had come, who was also a surrogate and working with Angie's campaign, and had asked him for his endorsement," Quade told NBC News. "We were both like, 'Oh, it's so inappropriate.'” Quade said Hoffman has recounted the incident to others over the past year and it has not been kept quiet.
In his statement, Hoffman acknowledged that Craig had sent sympathetic messages but said his campaign remarks addressed the subsequent endorsement requests and their impact on his family during their survival and recovery. He stood firm in his criticism while insisting he remained accountable for his words.
"Congresswoman Craig may disagree with my endorsement. She may defend her campaign's conduct," Hoffman wrote. "But she does not get to rewrite what my family experienced or publicly attack my honesty."
The shooting that sparked this dispute took place in June 2025. Vance Boelter, 59, pleaded guilty last month to six federal counts related to the stalking and shootings. He also murdered House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, in the same rampage. Boelter was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus 40 additional years, effectively a maximum punishment short of capital punishment.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "Hoffman's willingness to relitigate this dispute so publicly suggests the wound goes deeper than campaign disagreement, but without independent confirmation of who made the pitch, the credibility question cuts both ways."
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