Representative Peggy Bennett Contact information

Peggy Bennett, born on July 3, 1958, is an American politician who has been serving in the Minnesota House of Representatives since 2015. She is a member of the Republican Party of Minnesota. Bennett represents District 23A in southern Minnesota, which includes the city of Albert Lea and parts of Faribault, Freeborn, Steele, and Waseca Counties.

Bennett grew up in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. She graduated from Mound Westonka High School in Mound, Minnesota. She furthered her education at Crown College in St. Bonifacius, Minnesota, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in education. She also holds a Master of Arts in special education from St. Cloud State University.

Before her political career, Bennett was a first-grade public school teacher in Albert Lea for 33 years. She was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2014 and has been reelected every two years since. She defeated one-term DFL incumbent Shannon Savick, criticizing Savick and Democrats for raising taxes.

During the 2016 Republican Presidential Primary, Bennett endorsed Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Bennett is the minority lead on the Education Policy Committee and serves on the Education Finance and Veterans and Military Affairs Finance and Policy Committees. From 2015-16, Bennett served as vice chair of the Education Innovation Policy Committee. She was an assistant minority leader from 2019 to 2022.

Bennett has called for more local control in education decisions. She opposed efforts to provide free meals to all school children, regardless of family income, calling it a “shotgun approach”. She supported a bill that would speed up the licensing process for substitute teachers in response to workforce shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that DFL proposals didn’t go far enough. Bennett has spoken against bills to increase recruitment of teachers of color.

In 2018, Bennett authored legislation that passed unanimously creating a “sibling bill of rights” to help children in the foster care system avoid being separated from their siblings. She supported legislation increasing penalties on distracted driving and on protestors that block freeways. Bennett has been in contact and worked directly with an anti-LGBTQ group in Minnesota, the “Child Protection League.”