Christine Elizabeth "Tina" Smith (née Flint, born March 4, 1958) is an American politician, retired Democratic political consultant, and former businesswoman serving as the junior United States senator from Minnesota, a seat she has held since 2018. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Minnesota's affiliate of the national Democratic Party, she served from 2015 to 2018 as the 48th Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota under Governor Mark Dayton.
Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Smith moved to Minnesota in the 1980s to work for General Mills and later became the vice president of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota. She then began a career as a political consultant and organizer for local Democratic candidates. Smith managed Walter Mondale's unsuccessful last-minute campaign in the 2002 United States Senate election in Minnesota after incumbent senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash 11 days before the election.
After Mondale lost the Senate election, Smith served as chief of staff to Mayor of Minneapolis R. T. Rybak. She then helped run Dayton's successful campaign for Governor of Minnesota in 2010. After his victory, Dayton named Smith his chief of staff. Later, for Dayton's reelection campaign in the 2014 election, Smith was named as Dayton's pick for lieutenant governor. After winning her first election to public office, Smith served from 2015 to 2018 as Minnesota's 48th lieutenant governor. Dayton then appointed her to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Al Franken's resignation in 2018. She won the 2018 special election and was elected to a full term in 2020.
On February 13, 2025, Smith announced that she will not run for reelection in 2026.
Early life and education Smith was born on March 4, 1958, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the daughter of Christine, a teacher, and F. Harlan Flint, a lawyer. She mostly grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, attending Manderfield and Acequia Madre Elementary. She finished high school at Redwood High School in Larkspur, California.
Before going to college, Smith worked on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. She graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, and later earned a Master of Business Administration from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Early career In 1984, Smith moved to Minnesota for a marketing job at General Mills. She later started her own marketing firm, where she consulted with businesses and nonprofits.
In the early 1990s, Smith became involved in local politics, volunteering for DFL campaigns in Minneapolis. She managed Ted Mondale's unsuccessful 1998 campaign for governor. After Minnesota's U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash weeks before the 2002 election, Smith managed former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale's campaign for the seat. After Mondale lost a narrow election to Norm Coleman, Smith began working as the vice president of external affairs at Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
In 2006, Smith left her job at Planned Parenthood to serve as chief of staff to Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak. In 2010, she was picked to manage Rybak's gubernatorial campaign, which ended after Margaret Anderson Kelliher won the DFL endorsement. Smith then joined the campaign of Mark Dayton, who skipped the endorsing convention and eventually won the DFL primary. After Dayton defeated Republican Tom Emmer in the general election, Smith was named a co-chair of the transition. When Dayton took office in January 2011, he appointed Smith as his chief of staff.
Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota 2014 election
When Lieutenant Governor Yvonne Prettner Solon announced she would not seek reelection, Dayton selected Smith as his running mate in the 2014 gubernatorial election. He cited Smith's work on passing legislation for the new Minnesota Vikings Stadium, as well as her support for the Destination Medical Center project with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.
Smith stepped down as Dayton's chief of staff to campaign for lieutenant governor. After being nominated by acclamation at the DFL state convention, and facing only token opposition in the DFL gubernatorial primary, Dayton and Smith defeated Republicans Jeff Johnson and Bill Kuisle in the general election.
Tenure
Smith took office as lieutenant governor on January 5, 2015, and served until she was appointed to represent Minnesota in the U.S. Senate on January 2, 2018. During her tenure, Smith was described by many political observers as having a much higher profile and playing a much more significant role in legislative negotiations than her predecessors. She spent a significant amount of time traveling the state in support of the priorities of Dayton's administration, including funding for optional preschool for all four-year-olds, transportation infrastructure, and rural broadband internet access. She also served as chair of the Destination Medical Center board until her resignation in December 2017.
In 2016, Roll Call named Smith to its "America's Top 25 Most Influential Women in State Politics" list, citing her high-profile role in the Dayton administration.
Despite widespread speculation to the contrary, Smith announced in March 2017 that she would not run for governor in the 2018 election.
U.S. Senate Appointment On December 13, 2017, Governor Dayton announced Smith as his pick to fill the United States Senate seat held by Al Franken, who had announced he would resign amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Democrats in the state immediately united around Smith as the party's candidate in the November 2018 special election to fill Franken's term. Franken resigned on January 2, 2018.
Elections 2018 special
In August 2018, Smith won the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party primary with 76% of the vote. Richard Painter, a White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, finished second with 14%.
In the November general election, Smith defeated Republican nominee Karin Housley, a state senator from St. Marys Point, with 53% of the vote to Housley's 42%.
2020
Minnesota was seen as a swing state in the 2020 presidential election, which made Smith a swing-state Democrat up for reelection. Her campaign focused on delivering results for Minnesotans on local issues, such as farming in southern Minnesota, police brutality in wake of the George Floyd protests, and North Shore drilling in the Duluth area, and took strong positions on national issues such as the Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court nomination. Smith defeated Republican nominee Jason Lewis with 48.8% of the vote to Lewis's 43.5%, thus winning her first full six-year Senate term.
Tenure
With Vice President Mike Pence administering the oath of office, Smith was officially sworn in as a U.S. Senator on January 3, 2018, alongside Doug Jones of Alabama. She was accompanied by fellow Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and former Vice President and former Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale.
Smith was participating in the certification of the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol. She called the participants in the attack "seditionists" and blamed Trump for inciting the attack. When the Capitol was secure and the Congress returned to session, Smith supported the certification of the count. In response to the insurrection, she called for Trump's immediate removal from office through the invocation of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and impeachment, saying that the president needed to be held accountable for the attack and that "he is dangerous to our democracy and to public safety." She said that Representatives Michelle Fischbach and Jim Hagedorn, who objected to certifying the election, "were complicit in pushing for the president's big lie", and also called on Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to resign for objecting to the certification of the election and spreading falsehoods about election integrity.
On January 31, 2024, Smith sent a one-minute video to the Washington Press Club Foundation's annual congressional dinner, "roasting" U.S. Representative Dean Phillips over his campaign in the 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries to challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic Party's nomination for president.
Smith is a member of the Fight Club in the U.S. Senate.
Committee assignments
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Subcommittee on Commodities, Risk Management and Trade Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, Poultry, Local Food Systems, and Food Safety and Security Subcommittee on Rural Development and Energy (chair) Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development (chair) Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Children and Families Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety Committee on Indian Affairs
Smith previously served on the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources from January 10, 2018, to January 3, 2019, during the first session of the 116th Congress.
Caucus memberships Rare Disease Caucus
Political positions Abortion Smith supports abortion rights. She was a vice president at Planned Parenthood from 2003 to 2006, where she lobbied against efforts to restrict abortion.
In February 2019, Smith voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, saying that the bill "would override physicians' professional judgment about what is best for their patients" and "put physicians in the position of facing criminal penalties if their judgment about what is best for their patient is contrary to what is described in this bill."
On May 2, 2022, just after Politico obtained and released a 98-page U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion striking down Roe v. Wade, Smith responded in a tweet, "This is bullshit." After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, Senators Smith and Elizabeth Warren wrote a New York Times op-ed calling on President Joe Biden to unblock "critical resources and authority that states and the federal government can use to meet the surge in demand for reproductive health services." On April 2, 2024, Smith published an essay, "I Hope to Repeal an Arcane Law That Could Be Misused to Ban Abortion Nationwide", in The New York Times.
Agriculture
In March 2019, Smith was one of 38 senators to sign a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue warning that dairy farmers "have continued to face market instability and are struggling to survive the fourth year of sustained low prices" and urging his department to "strongly encourage these farmers to consider the Dairy Margin Coverage program."
Climate change In November 2018, Smith was one of 25 Democratic senators to have cosponsored a resolution in response to findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and National Climate Assessment. The resolution affirmed the senators' acceptance of the findings and their support for bold action to address climate change.
Smith was a member of the Senate Democrats' Special Committee on the Climate Crisis, which published a report of its findings in August 2020.
Digital assets In a 2021 letter, Smith and four colleagues wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to criticize the company's Diem digital currency project. In the letter, they argued that "stablecoins in general" are "incompatible with the actual financial regulatory landscape." In 2022, Smith and Elizabeth Warren wrote to Fidelity Investments CEO Abigail Johnson to object to a plan to allow for the inclusion of Bitcoin in their 401(k)s.
Drug policy