WASHINGTON — Minnesota Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman said Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) was trying to get his endorsement for her Senate bid as he was recovering from being shot nine times in an attempted assassination in June 2025.

Craig is calling his claim “categorically false.”

Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot multiple times by Vance Luther Boelter, who was just sentenced on Thursday to two consecutive life terms plus a consecutive 40-year term for attempting to murder the Hoffmans, and for killing the late Minnesota Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.

Speaking Friday night at a St. Paul campaign event for Craig’s primary opponent, Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, Hoffman said a stark difference between the two was how they reached out to him after he was shot.

“When her opponent would check on our family, she asked for my — she asked that I endorse her campaign,” Hoffman said to boos in the crowd. “She sent a dear friend out twice, once when I was in the ICU and once at our home. Honest to God, true story. And I’m being public about it because it really hurt.”

Hoffman claimed Craig was eager for his endorsement at the time because it was at a moment “when our family’s story had high visibility.”

“That’s all you need to know about the differences between the opponent that Peggy has and Peggy Flanagan,” said Hoffman, raising his voice, “because Peggy Flanagan, she checked on us out of her love for how we were.”

Late Friday, Yvette Hoffman shared a social media post by a Minnesota influencer relaying the story of Craig seeking her husband’s endorsement when he was in the ICU.

“It’s true,” she wrote.

A Craig campaign spokesperson disputed Hoffman’s story.

“We cannot imagine the pain and trauma that the entire Hoffman family has and continue to experience. But the claim is categorically false,” Craig’s spokesperson said in a statement.

“The Congresswoman reached out to Senator Hoffman only expressing deep sympathy from her and her wife, Cheryl, after their horrific shooting while he was in the ICU and did not reach out again until August 5 after he began making political endorsements in other races again,” said the spokesperson, sharing a link to this story about Hoffman endorsing a congressional candidate in August 2025. “The Congresswoman continues to pray and keeps John, Yvette and Hope Hoffman in her thoughts and is grateful for their continued recovery.”

Craig’s campaign also shared a screenshot of text messages the congresswoman sent to Hoffman after his attempted assassination. In one, sent on the day of the assassination attempt, Craig said she and her wife were praying for him and his wife. In another, sent weeks later, Craig said she would “love to talk with you about the open Senate race when you’re up to it.”

Hoffman declined to be interviewed for this story.

But Minnesota Democratic state Sen. Erin Maye Quade told HuffPost she had his permission to speak on his behalf and said when she visited him in a rehab facility he was in after he’d left the ICU, Hoffman told her about Craig sending a surrogate to the ICU to get his endorsement.

“He told me about it in real time,” said Maye Quade. “He was telling me about baskets people had sent, or people who had come to see him at the hospital, and he mentioned, ‘Yeah, so and so came and saw me and was talking about endorsing Angie Craig.’”

Maye Quade said she told Hoffman at the time that that was “so inappropriate” and he agreed it was “super weird.” He also said the Craig campaign surrogate “felt really weird about it.”

As for Craig denying this happened, Maye Quade said, “It’s one thing to have disagreements on who we’re endorsing and stuff. But to call John Hoffman a liar is, I think, it’s worse than the original faux pas.”

Craig continued pushing back on Hoffman’s claims on Sunday during an appearance on a local TV news station.

“I would never. And I did never,” Craig said on Fox 9. “Frankly, no one would ever send someone to an ICU to talk about politics with what happened to the Hoffman family.”

Craig said she did contact Hoffman for his endorsement in September, months after he was shot, when she saw him making political speeches and endorsements. But as for Hoffman’s claims, she said, “I don’t know exactly what he’s talking about.”

When asked if she was claiming Hoffman lied, Craig said, “The timeline of events is I reached out to the Hoffmans via text to send them our prayers immediately after the shooting, and that I didn’t actually make contact with the Hoffmans until he reentered politics because I didn’t think that was appropriate.”

In response, Hoffman released a lengthy statement Sunday afternoon saying he stood by his comments and criticized Craig for conflating her text messages to him with sending a surrogate to the ICU to get his endorsement for her campaign. His wife, Yvette, shared his statement on social media.

“She may defend her campaign’s conduct. But she does not get to rewrite what my family experienced or publicly attack my honesty,” Hoffman said in his statement. “After everything Yvette, Hope and I have endured, we deserve better than having our trauma turned against us for political damage control.”

Craig and Flanagan are in a heated race to replace Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who is not running for reelection. Flanagan, a staunch progressive who earned her state party’s endorsement in May, has made it central to her campaign that she doesn’t take money from corporate PACs, and has attacked Craig for benefiting from cryptocurrency and pro-Israel groups spending millions of dollars on ads in support of her campaign.

She’s also railed against Craig’s voting record on immigration, an explosive issue in Minnesota after the Trump administration’s surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers late last year traumatized immigrant communities and left Americans Alex Pretti and Renee Good dead.

Craig, a moderate four-term congresswoman who flipped her district from red to blue in 2018, has touted legislation she’s passed in the House and her record of being able to work with Republicans. She’s also argued she has the “electability” factor and that Flanagan is vulnerable in a general election because of the governor’s ties to Minnesota’s fraud scandal.

Both are vying to win the Democratic primary election on Aug. 11. Minnesota, a state that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris carried by 4.2 percentage points in 2024, hasn’t sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 20 years, which means whoever wins the Democratic primary is strongly favored to win the November general election.

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