When the Minnesota state legislature is not in session, Kaela Berg is working in the skies.
Berg has spent the last six years doubling as a state legislator and a flight attendant, taking shifts when the legislature is on break.
“Even as a state legislator, I still live paycheck to paycheck,” she said. “I have to have both of those jobs to make ends meet. I’ve gone without healthcare during the pandemic because I didn’t qualify through my employer. I know what it’s like to worry about medical bills, to not have healthcare.”
A former union leader who has worked as a flight attendant for 30 years, Berg said she’s seen the Trump administration’s attacks against the labor movement and wants to fight for her fellow workers in Congress, where those who know what it’s like to work and still struggle to afford basic necessities are vastly underrepresented.
“These systems are designed to keep working people down.” Berg said. “There is no one better to fight for us than one of us, and working people have not been at the table.”
Berg is one of a string of candidates from the labor movement running for Congress in the 2026 midterms and hoping to win back blue-collar workers. Other union leaders running campaigns include smokejumper Sam Forstag in Montana, ironworker Brian Poindexter in Ohio, organizer Clair Valdez in New York and firefighter union president Bob Brooks in Pennsylvania.
This field of labor candidates come as Democrats seek to capitalize on Donald Trump’s sinking approval ratings – which are hovering around 37%, according to a recent NBC News poll – to retake the House and possibly the Senate as well.
Berg has served as vice-president of her union, Endeavor Association of Flight Attendants, which represents flight attendants for Endeavor Air, a subsidiary of Delta Airlines based in Minneapolis. She has also served as interim president and chair of her local union’s government affairs committee, where she said she learned not only how to negotiate contracts and fight for better pay and benefits, but also how to lobby for policies important to workers.
That labor background and experience inspired her to get involved in public service, culminating in her becoming a state representative for Saint Paul in 2020 while continuing to work as a flight attendant.
“I got involved in the union in my first year of flying, and really found a home there with the values of solidarity, standing up for each other and fighting against the corporations; it really resonated with me,” Berg said. “Being a union member is the best part of being a flight attendant.”
Berg cited the affordability crisis, the dismantling of the National Labor Relations Board and attempts to strip collective bargaining agreements from hundreds of thousands of federal workers as impetus for entering the race to represent Minnesota’s second congressional district, which is being vacated by the incumbent, Democrat Angie Craig, who is running for a Senate seat.
A record 55% of Americans say their financial situation is worsening, according to a recent Gallup poll, and Berg explained that middle-class constituents in her district are struggling to cover necessities like childcare, health insurance premiums, gas and groceries. Policies like universal healthcare, fighting corporations and corruption in Congress, and halting Trump’s tariffs – which have driven up costs for the average American family – would help her constituents handle the affordability crisis.
“I realized that the things that I had learned as an organizer and a labor leader were really important to take into public service, my whole reason for getting involved in politics was to fight for hard-working families,” she said.
Berg faces a competitive Democratic primary that includes Minnesota state senator Matt Klein and former state senator Matt Little. All three are currently fighting for 60% of delegates to secure an endorsement from the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party on 9 May, with the primary set for 11 August. According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, the district favors Democrats by three percentage points.
Among the issues at the center of the race, Berg cited, was the massive immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota in January, where federal immigration officers killed two unarmed civilians, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, inciting mass protests in Minnesota and the ongoing federal law enforcement presence in the state at the behest of the Trump administration.
“We have had a violent occupation of ICE agents in our streets for months on end. They’re still terrorizing our Somali community, especially because of the fraud allegations,” said Berg. “We know the agenda from this administration is to demonize immigrants and our communities, because that’s how they control people, and we’re simply not going to stand for it. I think Minnesota has shown that we’ve been an active participant in that fight, and I will continue to take that to Congress.”
