PHOTO BY CAROLINE YANG
“I brought treats,” says a voice—warm, a little bright, the kind that carries easily across a park without demanding attention.
We’re near the Lake Harriet Bandshell on a late spring morning that feels like a collective exhale—crisp in the shade, warm in the sunlight. People pass by walking dogs, runners loop the lake, and a few sailboats sit at the ready just offshore. Tina Smith approaches dressed for the moment, not the office: a bright pink top, jeans, and black and white polka-dot sneakers. Oh, and she’s carrying a foil-wrapped plate of homemade lemon bars. It’s not performative, just instinct. A small, unforced gesture that feels consistent with how she has moved through public life.
Smith has spent more than two decades in public service, much of it behind the scenes before stepping into elected office. She served as chief of staff to Gov. Mark Dayton, then as Minnesota’s lieutenant governor from 2015 to 2018. That year, she was appointed to the U.S. Senate following Al Franken’s resignation and went on to win statewide elections in 2018 and 2020. Over time, she has built a reputation as a pragmatic, deeply policy-focused leader, grounded in the belief that public service is less about visibility and more about impact.
Early last year, Smith announced she will not seek reelection in 2026—a decision she has framed as personal, not political. As Minnesota approaches a transitional moment, she is thinking less about her own next chapter and more about what comes after: the leaders who will step in, the values they will carry forward, and what it means to leave something meaningful behind.
PHOTO BY CAROLINE YANG
Tell me about your journey into politics and how it led you to today.
I grew up in a family where the expectation was that you figure out how you’re gonna contribute to your community. It doesn’t matter how, but you figure it out. My dad was on the school board, and my mom was really involved. So, when [my husband] Archie and I moved to Minnesota in 1984, we didn’t know anybody. It was a brand-new place for us. We were right out of graduate school, then we had these two little boys. I started to think about what I wanted that to be like. The way I decided to engage was working on a little local state legislator race, which was really sort of the beginning of my journey. And I think I had the feeling that it’s your responsibility as a citizen of this incredible, imperfect country to figure out a way to contribute. Maybe it’s in the nonprofit world. Maybe it’s just volunteering at your kids’ school. You have a responsibility. And so, I think that that still drives me to this day. It’s still very much a part of my ethic.
You have more than two decades in public service and more than 70 bills signed into law. How do you define making an impact, and how has that changed over time?
When I first started to do this, I was very basic about it, and just feeling like, you need to figure out how to be useful and how to help make things better for people. And that was the job. And I think now, I certainly still feel that way, but I also feel the impact is helping people understand that their voices are powerful, that they have power, that they are the main actors in their own lives. And my job is to give voice to that and to listen to them and bring that forward. And particularly now, because I’m so focused on the great inequities in our society, the massive differences in wealth and income between privileged people and regular people. It’s figuring out how to help shift that power dynamic.
You said that your decision to not seek reelection is personal. What felt most important about making that choice at this time?
I think that leaders have a responsibility to pass the torch and to make space for the next generation of leaders. It’s often very explicitly organized in the nonprofit sector and in the corporate sector, but less so in politics. The timing of making space for new leaders to come in and give them a chance to do this job is a big part of it. And then the super personal part of it is that, when you’re 68, you don’t have the conceit of thinking that you have an endless number of years ahead of you. So, you start to think, ‘How do I want to explore what I want to do right now? What do I want to do with this most precious life?’
I’ve been in the Senate for nine years, which seems to me like a pretty long time. I mean, I know some people have been there for literally decades. But that’s not for me. For me, now, it’s an opportunity to do some exploring and think about different ways of being useful. It’s both personal and also that feeling that there are such great leaders that are more than ready to be outstanding United States senators and making space for them.
What are your hopes for when you look back in five years?
I think that we are really at a tipping point in our politics, and I think my party is at a tipping point, too. The reality is that right now, so many Americans feel like this system is failing them. I hope that this generation of leaders who are going to be elected this year and in the coming years are ready to challenge the status quo that has let so many people down. I intend to continue to do that in the ways that I can, and I hope that five years from now, more people will have faith that their federal government can actually help make their lives better.
It’s interesting because I’ve worked at the state, local, and federal levels, and it’s all very different. [There’s] so much more immediacy to the work at the local level and even the state level, whereas [at] the federal level, you’re sort of removed. Being a mayor or a governor is sort of like being the mother or the father, and being a senator is sort of like being the auntie. You travel, you come back once in a while, hopefully you bring gifts. But all of that is to say that I think people feeling that their government is letting them down or standing up for them varies a lot. Washington is really pretty broken right now. You might have a different feeling about whether your mayor is doing a good job versus whether or not the president is doing a good job.
It’s complex, of course, but I also think most people don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘Good morning, dear. I’m a Democrat, and now we’ve got to figure out how to get the kids to school.’ Their party identity isn’t actually core to how they think about their lives. They’re just trying to figure out how to make their lives work. And I think leaders need to dive into that a little bit more.
PHOTO BY CAROLINE YANG
You’ve always focused on affordability and well-being for all. What guided those priorities?
As I said, most people wake up in the morning trying to figure out how to make their lives work and how to hold it together, and hopefully, how to find a little joy in their lives. When I started as lieutenant governor and then as senator, I would go out and talk to people, and people would talk about how hard it was to afford things that were really important to them. I will never forget talking with a young woman who had a young child, and she and her husband learned pretty early on that their child had early-onset juvenile diabetes. They were a middle-class family, and suddenly they were trying to figure out how to afford insulin and all the treatments. And she started to do the research on this, and the medication in the United States would cost $600 a month. If she lived in France, it would cost $5 a month, and in England, it would be free. How is that fair? That motivated me to start working on how we could lower the cost of insulin. I talked to another woman whose son had died of ketoacidosis because he was rationing his insulin. He had a good job. But he couldn’t afford this lifesaving medication, and he died. He was 26 years old. Those are the stories that motivated me.
On the mental health front, I was so touched by the stories that I was hearing from young people about how they were having all these struggles with their mental health and they couldn’t figure out how to get help, and they didn’t really want to talk about it. And then, of course, I thought about my own challenges with depression when I had been a young woman. I started to realize the power when you’re a senator of, like, being real about what you’ve coped with in your own life, as a way of making it safer for other people to be real about what they’re dealing with.
People just want to feel heard.
Yeah, that’s exactly right. I learned this early on. I felt so much responsibility that if somebody is gonna tell me what they’re struggling with, then it becomes my responsibility to fix it for them.
Out of everything you’ve accomplished, what’s something you’re most proud of?
I’m a very optimistic person, and I have so much faith in the ability of people to change their own lives and to figure things out, and that we collectively have so much faith in our ability to change things. And yet, I’m also like, we need to do more. I think at the end of the day, the work that I’ve done on mental health—I’m really proud of that work. The bills that we passed to make it easier for young people to at least be able to walk through the door of a clinic in their school and tell somebody that they need help and be able to get help there—I think has had a huge impact on people’s lives.
The other thing I would say, although it’s very poignant right now, is the laws that we passed in the [2022] Inflation Reduction Act, especially around clean energy, have been absolutely transformational. And even though the Trump administration is doing its damnedest to undo all of that, there is still such good coming out of that. And I think that work will live on for a long time and will be the point of the spear in terms of the transition and the transformation that we need.
You’ve worked both behind the scenes and in elected office. How have those two perspectives shaped the way you lead?
It’s funny. In a way, I’m sort of, like, staffer Cinderella, you know? I was the staffer, and I honestly never really had an ambition to be senator. When I was lieutenant governor, I thought about running for governor and decided that I didn’t need to do that. I didn’t feel a compulsion or push to do it. To be honest, I’m plenty ambitious and I’m very competitive, and I own that. But I’m not driven by that because of my staffer roots.
Your oldest grandson is 5. What do you want to tell your grandkids about your political career?
I hope that they know all the work that I’ve done, not just in the Senate, was always trying to make things better and trying to help people. I also hope that they can find a way to contribute, which I think is just sort of a great thing about Minnesota—that sense of civic infrastructure that we have, that we all are in it together. I don’t want to lose that.
What are you most excited for when you hang up your hat?
My staff will tell you that I do not love having my daily existence determined by something that is completely out of my control in terms of my schedule and when I can come home. I’ll be very glad that I don’t have to get on an airplane every Monday morning. I’ll be able to sit at home by the fire and have a second cup of coffee with Archie and start to imagine what might come next.
