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Our verdict

LiberalMind endorses Eric Pratt

Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, 2026, and early voting is underway in Minnesota. This is the whole race — the records, the claims against each candidate, and what the sources actually show. Read the research, and decide which flaw you can live with.

The setup

Minnesota's 2nd District covers the southern Twin Cities suburbs and exurbs — Dakota and Scott counties, Burnsville, Eagan, Lakeville. It is an open seat: Rep. Angie Craig (D), in office since 2019 and re-elected in 2024 with 55.5%, retired to run for the U.S. Senate — and lost the August DFL Senate primary to Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan. Cook's PVI is D+2. No third-party or independent candidate was located; the ballot is Democrat Matt Little against Republican Eric Pratt.

Unusually for an open seat, both nominees are proven in elected office: Little is a former Lakeville mayor and state senator; Pratt is a sitting state senator of thirteen years. They debated on KSTP (Oct 2) and MPR (Oct 9).

The ratings agree — and their age is part of the story, printed rather than smoothed: Cook says Likely D, in a rating dated April 30, 2025; Inside Elections says Likely D (December 5, 2025); Sabato's Crystal Ball says Likely D (March 26, 2026). Every one of those ratings predates the August primaries and the choice of these two nominees. They are a judgment about the open seat's lean, not a reaction to Little vs. Pratt, and no rater has moved since the matchup was set. A fourth forecaster, Decision Desk HQ, says Safe D (Oct 1) — printed for completeness, not averaged in. The polling, such as it is, lines up behind the lean: PollingSource's average (Little +8.5) rests on two polls — Impact Research (D-sponsored), Sept 9–13, Little 52, Pratt 40; and Harper Polling (R-sponsored), June 18–21, before the primary, Little 45, Pratt 40. Opposite sponsors, same direction, margins of 12 and 5.

The outside money is the loudest fact in the race: $4.64 million in independent expenditures, of which $4.61 million is support and only $34,785 opposition — almost all of it pro-Little, led by 314 Action Fund's $2.46 million (PollingSource). Little has raised about twice Pratt's total ($1.49 million to $768,791). National Republican money has, so far, declined to contest this seat at scale. Little's primary-night claim that "$3.5 million dollars of outside money couldn't buy this election" is his own figure about the DFL primary, printed as his quote, not an audited total.

Matt Little (Democratic)

The man and his record: Little was elected to the Lakeville City Council in 2010 and as Lakeville's mayor in 2011, then served in the Minnesota Senate (District 58) from 2017 to 2021, losing re-election in 2020. He owns a law firm representing seniors and people with disabilities injured by negligence or abuse (West St. Paul Reader). He won the DFL convention endorsement and a six-candidate primary with 47.2%. His primary endorsements ran progressive — Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, National Nurses United, MoveOn, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, AG Keith Ellison — and Angie Craig pointedly endorsed no one.

His platform, in his own words, because the call turns on it: Medicare for All — "health care should be a right" — citing the CBO for a claimed $650 billion a year in system savings; a permanent Child Tax Credit expansion; universal pre-K; raising the Social Security tax cap; the "most sweeping and strict anti-corruption laws in American history"; and no corporate PAC money (his questionnaire answers, West St. Paul Reader; campaign media page). On ICE, his campaign says he "took to the streets and spent months personally tracking ICE agents and documenting their lawless raids" after ICE killed two Minnesotans, and pledges in Congress to cut ICE funding, ban agents wearing masks, and end warrantless arrests (campaign media page — his own description of his activism; no independent reporting of the tracking was located in our research, and we print it as his campaign's account). His BallotReady-compiled positions include ending all U.S. military aid and weapons sales to Israel until listed conditions are met.

The AMA number, at its verified core: The Center of the American Experiment — a conservative think tank, flagged as an opposition source — documents that Little claimed an "American Medical Association" study found Medicare for All would save families $3,000 a year and 100,000 lives. The AMA has long opposed single-payer and produced no such study. The think tank's broader argument is argument; the misattribution is the checkable core, and it checks out: his signature program's signature number was credited to a body that opposes the program. Per Pratt's debate attack (Citizen Portal summary, Oct 13), the plan's assumptions are optimistic; Pratt defends targeted market reforms instead.

The steelman: Little is a proven local executive — a mayor under whom Lakeville "led the state in single-family home development," a state senator who introduced hearing-aid coverage and prescription-drug-ad bills (UFCW voter guide, a union source) — and nothing in his file is a scandal. He is not hiding his program; he is running on it, loudly, in the incumbent's own seat. Voters who want that program should vote for him with their eyes open, because he has told them exactly what it is.

The flaw, plainly: Little's flaw is the program itself, stated in his own questionnaire: Medicare for All as the centerpiece, universal pre-K, a permanent expanded Child Tax Credit, ICE defunding by pledge, and a cutoff of all military aid to Israel — the national left's governing program, adopted as his personal platform, with its flagship savings figure attributed to an authority that does not hold it. That is his party's program carried at full weight, chosen plank by plank as the candidacy itself — not an inherited party-line vote but the platform he is asking this district to send to Washington — and every plank is priced at that full weight.

Eric Pratt (Republican)

The man and his record: Pratt is a state senator from Prior Lake (District 54), first elected in 2012 and serving since 2013, previously a Prior Lake–Savage school board member. He retired after 30 years in financial services — banking and financial risk management, including U.S. Bancorp — with a B.A. in economics (Colorado Boulder) and an MBA in finance (St. Thomas) (AgWeb; Minnesota Legislative Reference Library). His Senate roles include Finance Committee ranking minority member. His platform as stated: affordability through keeping more earnings, fiscal restraint, regulatory relief for small businesses and producers, and market-oriented health-care cost reforms against Medicare for All (West St. Paul Reader questionnaire; Citizen Portal debate summary).

His votes, precisely, because both sides blur them: Per Vote Smart's compilation, he voted Yea on HF 1 (2025), repealing MinnesotaCare eligibility for undocumented immigrants; Nay on SF 4067 (2026), prohibiting assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines; and Nay on HF 5 (2025), a basic education formula increase. A union advocacy guide (a flagged opposition source) adds that he voted against a 3% rent-increase cap for some manufactured-home residents — his stated reason: "de facto rent control" — and against the 2023 bill (HF 1938) creating a state child tax credit and cutting Social Security-benefit taxes. His questionnaire separately claims he authored and passed a state child tax credit in the Senate. Those are different bills in different years — his authored credit versus the 2023 bill he opposed — and we print both without letting either side's framing merge them.

Pros: A proven, thirteen-year legislative record in the district's own suburbs; a finance career behind the fiscal platform; a clean file — no scandal or ethics finding located in the sourced record; positions stated in the district's own voter guide, checkable line by line.

Cons: His campaign is being outspent roughly two to one with almost no Republican outside money behind it — an organizational weakness that is the national party's verdict as much as his. His record is a reliable party record; there is no independent streak in the file for voters who want one.

The flaw, plainly: Pratt's flaw is ordinariness at a discount: a solid, proven, party-line state senator running a modestly funded campaign for a seat his party's national money has largely written off. Nothing in the file is worse than that, and nothing in it is better, either.

OUR CALL

LiberalMind endorses Eric Pratt.

On the standard geometry, this is not close: a proven Republican with a clean file and a market-oriented platform against a Democrat who carries his party's program at full weight — Medicare for All, ICE funding cuts, a total military-aid cutoff to Israel — and whose file documents no break toward our values of the kind the Manchin test requires. No exception is earned, so none is granted. Pratt's flaws are noted above and priced as what they are: an underfunded campaign in a seat the raters (on stale ratings) call Likely D. The diligence point stands on its own: a candidate whose signature number is attributed to a body that opposes his signature policy has failed the verification standard we apply to everyone, including the people we endorse.

This race is one of hundreds in LiberalMind's Election 2026 coverage. For the complete breakdown — every race, claim by claim — go to liberalmindhq.com.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Winner: Matt Little (Democratic) — called by the Associated Press. This result was appended on November 4, 2026 (results wave 2); the original article above is unchanged, exactly as published before Election Day.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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