3/5

Congressman Peterson is barely a Democrat. Elected in 1990, he has voted with Republicans on almost every significant issue over the last three decades. He has voted for a string of financial deregulation bills, supported the Iraq war, opposed the Affordable Care Act, and signs on to almost every Republican bill to outlaw gay marriage and abortion. Most recently, Peterson has stood out as the only Democrat to vote against the Violence Against Women Act (because it was too tough on the rights of convicted domestic abusers to own firearms), D.C. statehood, and both articles of Trump’s Impeachment. Unsurprisingly, he was a founding member of the Blue Dog Caucus, where this sort of voting record is tolerated. Even among this group of corporate hacks, he is far to the right.

Because of Democrats’ insane policy of making longevity the primary qualification for holding chairmanships, this throwback of a Dixiecrat has alternated between Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Committee on Agriculture for the past 14 years. Peterson has gone to bat for every slimy corporate interest in this powerful role, and has been rewarded with large donations from traditionally rightwing industries ranging from the Koch Industries to Monsanto.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any groundswell in Peterson’s district for a progressive alternative. He won his most recent primary with 76% of the vote against fractured opposition. There is a halfway decent argument for progressives to vote for Peterson’s Republican opponent. They have practically no discernible policy differences, but Peterson’s continued seniority on the Agriculture Committee will cause major impediments to the passage of progressive legislation, while a single freshman Republican would hold no power in a Democratic Congress.

To be fair to Peterson, he does represent a district that has shifted hard away from Democrats in the last decade. Obama lost MN-7 by 10% in 2012, and Hillary got absolutely destroyed four years later by 30%. Somehow though, Peterson has fended off every Republican opponent while almost all of his fellow old-school Blue Dog colleagues have lost their seats or retired during the Obama years. Peterson will likely be the last Democrat to represent Western Minnesota in Congress once he decides to stop running for reelection, unless Democrats figure out a way to win back a whole lot of white non-college educated voters (preferably while not acting like a Republican).

Side Note) In 2016 Peterson told reporters that he planed to cast his vote as a Super Delegate for Senator Bernie Sanders at the DNC because his District voted for Sanders over Clinton in that year's Democratic Caucus. Read into that what you will, but one principled stance against the DNC does not outweigh decades of bad votes.