| Amy Klobuchar | |
|---|---|
| United States Senator from Minnesota |
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| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office January 3, 2007 Serving with Al Franken |
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| Preceded by | Mark Dayton |
| Hennepin County Attorney | |
| In office 1999–2007 |
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| Preceded by | Michael O. Freeman |
| Succeeded by | Michael O. Freeman |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Amy Jean Klobuchar May 25, 1960 Plymouth, Minnesota |
| Political party | Democratic-Farmer-Labor |
| Spouse(s) | John Bessler |
| Children | Abigail Klobuchar Bessler |
| Residence | Minneapolis, Minnesota |
| Alma mater | Yale University (B.A.) University of Chicago (J.D.) |
| Occupation | Attorney |
| Religion | Congregationalism |
| Website | Senator Amy Klobuchar |
Amy Jean Klobuchar ( /ˈkloʊbəʃɑr/, born May 25, 1960) is the senior United States Senator from Minnesota. She is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, an affiliate of the Democratic Party. She is the first elected female senator from Minnesota and is one of seventeen female senators serving in the 112th United States Congress.
Formerly county attorney of Hennepin County, Klobuchar was the chief prosecutor for the most populous county in Minnesota. She was a legal adviser to former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale and partner in two prominent law firms.[1] She has been cited by the New York Times as one of the seventeen women most likely to become the first female President of the United States[2] and by MSNBC as a possible nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.[3]
Klobuchar served as Minnesota's only senator between January 3, 2009 and July 7, 2009, due to the contested results of Minnesota's senatorial election held the previous year.
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Born in Plymouth, Minnesota, Klobuchar is the daughter of Rose Katherine (née Heuberger), who retired at age 70 from teaching second grade, and Jim Klobuchar, an author and retired sportswriter and columnist for the Star Tribune. Jim Klobuchar's grandparents were Slovene immigrants to the U.S. and his father was a miner on the Iron Range; Amy Klobuchar's maternal grandparents were from Switzerland.[4] Her husband, John Bessler, is an attorney in private practice and a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. A native of Mankato, Bessler attended Loyola High School, and is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. Klobuchar and Bessler were married in 1993, and have a daughter, Abigail Klobuchar Bessler, who was born in 1995.
Klobuchar attended public schools in Plymouth and was valedictorian at Wayzata High School. She received her bachelor's degree magna cum laude in political science from Yale University in 1982, where she was a member of the Yale College Democrats and the Feminist Caucus.[5] Her senior thesis was published as Uncovering the Dome,[6], a 150-page history describing the ten years of politics surrounding the building of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis. Klobuchar served as an associate editor of the Law Review and received her J.D. in 1985 at the University of Chicago Law School.[1]
Klobuchar was elected Hennepin County county attorney in 1998 and re-elected in 2002 with no opposition. In 2001 Minnesota Lawyer named her "Attorney of the Year". Klobuchar was president of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association from November 2002 to November 2003. Besides working as a prosecutor, Klobuchar was a partner at Dorsey & Whitney, where former Vice President Walter Mondale also works, and a partner at another top Minnesota law firm Gray Plant Mooty before seeking public office.
In early 2005 Mark Dayton announced that he would not seek re-election to the U.S. Senate seat he had won in 2000. Klobuchar was recognized early as a favorite for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nomination for the 2006 election. EMILY's List endorsed Klobuchar on September 29, 2005. Klobuchar won the DFL's endorsement on June 9, 2006.
Klobuchar gained the support of the majority of DFL state legislators in Minnesota during the primaries. A poll taken of DFL state delegates showed Klobuchar beating her then closest opponent, Patty Wetterling, 66% to 15%. In January, Wetterling dropped out of the race and endorsed Klobuchar. Former Senate candidate and prominent lawyer Mike Ciresi, who was widely seen as a serious potential DFL candidate, indicated in early February that he would not enter the race; that removal of her most significant potential competitor for the DFL nomination was viewed as an important boost for Klobuchar.[7] The only other serious candidate for the DFL endorsement was veterinarian Ford Bell, who dropped out of the race in July and also endorsed Klobuchar.
In the general election, she faced Republican candidate Mark Kennedy, Independence Party candidate Robert Fitzgerald, Constitution candidate Ben Powers, and Green Party candidate Michael Cavlan. Klobuchar consistently led Kennedy in the polls throughout the campaign.[8] She won with 58% of the vote to Kennedy's 38% and Fitzgerald's 3%, carrying all but eight of Minnesota's 87 counties. This landslide victory was the widest U.S. Senate election margin in Minnesota since the 1978 special election.
Klobuchar became the first elected female Senator from Minnesota. (Muriel Humphrey, the state's first female senator and former Second Lady of the United States, was appointed to fill her husband's unexpired term and not elected.)
For the 111th Congress, Amy Klobuchar is assigned to the following committees:
In March 2007, Klobuchar went on an official trip to Iraq with Senate colleagues Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), John Sununu (R-NH), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Klobuchar noted that U.S. troops were completing their job and working arduously to train the Iraqis, but voiced her frustration with Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki.[10]
Within days after the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge, Klobuchar introduced and succeeded in passing legislation to appropriate $250 million to Mn/DOT to quickly build a replacement bridge.[11]
As of September 2009, 58% of Minnesotans approved of the job she was doing, with 36% disapproving.[12]
From January to July 2009, Klobuchar was the only senator from Minnesota, until the resolution of the disputed 2008 Senate election in favor of Al Franken.
On March 12, 2010, a Rasmussen poll indicated 67% of Minnesotans approved of the job she was doing.
As a Democrat, Klobuchar's political positions have generally been in line with modern liberalism in the United States. She is pro-choice, supports LGBT rights, favors federal social services such as Social Security and universal health care, and is critical of the Iraq War.
Klobuchar opposed President Bush's plan to increase troop levels in Iraq in January 2007.[13] In May 2007, after president Bush vetoed a bill (which Klobuchar voted for) that would fund the troops but would impose time limits on the Iraq War, and supporters failed to garner enough congressional votes to override his veto, Klobuchar voted for additional funding for Iraq without such time limits,[14] saying she "simply could not stomach the idea of using our soldiers as bargaining chips".[15]
Klobuchar opposes free trade agreements that some perceive to cause a loss of jobs in the U.S. However, she has wavered on her opposition to such trade agreements since her election. A current trade agreement with Peru may achieve her support on grounds of expanded labor and environmental protections, even though they contain the same language as past trade agreements.[16]
In August 2007, Klobuchar was one of only 16 Democratic Senators and 41 Democratic House members to vote in favor of the "Protect America Act", which was widely seen as eroding the civil liberty protections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and posing difficult questions relative to the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.[17][18] She did, however, vote against granting legal immunity to telecom corporations that cooperated with the NSA warrantless surveillance program.[19]
Klobuchar voted in favor of the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2008, which included a provision to ban the use of waterboarding by the United States.[20]
During the hearing of Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan, Klobuchar sparred with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) when he questioned the nominee about his perception that Americans were "losing freedom." Klobuchar argued that the "free society" the senator favored was one in which women were underrepresented in government, including no representation on the Supreme Court or the Senate Judiciary Committee.[21]
Klobuchar supported President Barack Obama's health reform legislation; she voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in December 2009,[22] and she voted for the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.[23]
In 2011, Klobuchar co-sponsored the Protect IP Act and introduced the Commercial Felony Streaming Act, a bill that would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted material for the purpose of "commercial advantage or personal financial gain" a felony under current law. Backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and praised by industry groups, the legislation has been enormously unpopular among critics who believe it would apply to those who stream or post videos of copyrighted content (videogames, TV shows, music) on public sites such as YouTube.[24][25] Justin Bieber has on radio called for Klobuchar to be "locked up" for supporting a bill that would make "unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted material a felony".[26]
On March 30, 2008, Senator Klobuchar announced her endorsement of Senator Barack Obama in the Democratic Party presidential primary, promising her unpledged superdelegate vote for him.[27] She cited Obama's performance in the Minnesota caucuses, where he won with 66% of the popular vote, as well as her own "independent judgment."
| 2006 Minnesota U.S. Senate election | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
| DFL | Amy Klobuchar | 1,278,849 | 58.06% | +9.23% | |
| Republican | Mark Kennedy | 835,653 | 37.94% | -5.35% | |
| Independence | Robert Fitzgerald | 71,194 | 3.23% | -2.58% | |
| Green | Michael Cavlan | 10,714 | 0.49% | n/a | |
| Constitution | Ben Powers | 5,408 | 0.25% | -0.12% | |
| Write-ins | 954 | ||||
| Majority | 443,196 | 20.2% | |||
| Turnout | 2,202,772 | 70.64% | |||
| DFL hold | Swing | ||||
Note: The ±% column reflects the change in total number of votes won by each party from the previous election.
| Hennepin County Attorney election, 2002 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
| Nonpartisan | Amy Klobuchar | 380,632 | 98.7 | ||
| Write-in | 4,829 | 1.3 | |||
| Hennepin County Attorney election, 1998 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
| Nonpartisan | Amy Klobuchar | 223,416 | 50.3 | ||
| Nonpartisan | Sheryl Ramstad Hvass | 219,676 | 49.4 | ||
| Legal offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Michael O. Freeman |
Hennepin County Attorney 1999–2007 |
Succeeded by Michael O. Freeman |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by Jerry Janezich Endorsed by the DFL Convention |
DFL nominee for U.S. Senator from Minnesota (Class 1) 2006 |
Most recent |
| Preceded by Mark Dayton Winner of the DFL Primary |
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| United States Senate | ||
| Preceded by Mark Dayton |
United States Senator (Class 1) from Minnesota 2007–present Served alongside: Norm Coleman, Al Franken |
Incumbent |
| United States order of precedence | ||
| Preceded by Claire McCaskill D-Missouri |
United States Senators by seniority 66th |
Succeeded by Sheldon Whitehouse D-Rhode Island |
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