Amy Klobuchar
Amy Jean Klobuchar (/ˈkloʊbəʃɑːr/ KLOH-bə-shar; born May 25, 1960) is an American politician and lawyer serving as the senior United States senator from Minnesota, a seat she has held since 2007. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Minnesota's affiliate of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the county attorney of Hennepin County, Minnesota.
"Klobuchar" redirects here. For other people with the surname, see Klobuchar (surname).
Amy Klobuchar
Born in Plymouth, Minnesota, Klobuchar graduated from Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School. She was a partner at two Minneapolis law firms before being elected county attorney of Hennepin County in 1998, making her responsible for all criminal prosecution in Minnesota's most populous county. Klobuchar was first elected to the Senate in 2006, succeeding Mark Dayton to become Minnesota's first elected female United States senator. She was reelected by a landslide in 2012, winning 85 of the state's 87 counties. Klobuchar was reelected again in 2018.[1] In 2009 and 2010, she was described as a "rising star" in the Democratic Party.[2][3]
Klobuchar's political positions align with modern liberalism. She has focused on healthcare reform, consumer protection, agriculture, and climate change. She is known for her folksy, Midwestern demeanor and ability to win in rural Minnesota.[4][5][6]
On February 10, 2019, Klobuchar announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States in the 2020 election; on March 2, 2020, she suspended her campaign and endorsed Joe Biden.[7][8] In 2021, she became the chair of the Senate Rules Committee.
Early life and education[edit]
Born in Plymouth, Minnesota, Klobuchar is the daughter of Rose (née Heuberger) and Jim Klobuchar. Her mother taught second grade until she retired at age 70.[9] Her father Jim, a retired sportswriter and columnist for the Star Tribune,[10] was of Slovene descent.[11][12]
Klobuchar's parents divorced when she was 15. The divorce took a toll on the family; her relationship with her father was not fully restored until he quit drinking in the 1990s.[13]
She attended public schools in Plymouth and was valedictorian at Wayzata High School,[14][15] where she was also class treasurer and secretary.[16] She received her Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude in political science in 1982 from Yale University.[17] While at Yale, Klobuchar spent time as an intern for then-Vice President and former senator Walter Mondale.[18] Her senior thesis, Uncovering the Dome,[19] a 250-page history of the ten years of politics surrounding the building of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, was published by Waveland Press in 1986. After Yale, Klobuchar enrolled at the University of Chicago Law School, where she served as an associate editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and earned her Juris Doctor magna cum laude in 1985.[20]
Early career[edit]
After law school, Klobuchar worked as a corporate lawyer.[18] Before seeking public office, besides working as a prosecutor, Klobuchar was a partner at the Minnesota law firms Dorsey & Whitney and Gray Plant Mooty, where she specialized in "regulatory work in telecommunications law".[21][22][23] Her first foray into politics came after she gave birth and was forced to leave the hospital 24 hours later, a situation exacerbated by the fact that Klobuchar's daughter, Abigail,[18] was born with a disorder that prevented her from swallowing. The experience led Klobuchar to appear before the Minnesota State Legislature, advocating for a bill that would guarantee new mothers a 48-hour hospital stay. Minnesota passed the bill and President Clinton later made the policy federal law.[18]
Klobuchar was first a candidate for public office in 1994 when she ran for Hennepin County attorney. But she had pledged to drop out if the incumbent, Michael Freeman, got back in the race after failing to win the endorsement of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor (DFL) Party for governor. Keeping this pledge, she quit the race in June 1994 and supported Freeman for reelection.[24] Before running for office, Klobuchar was active in supporting DFL candidates, including Freeman in 1990. The county attorney election is nonpartisan, but Freeman, like Klobuchar, is a Democrat.
Hennepin County attorney[edit]
Klobuchar was elected Hennepin County attorney in 1998, running after Freeman declined to seek an additional term.[25][18] In the nonpartisan election, she defeated Republican Sheryl Ramstad Hvass by a margin of less than 1%. Klobuchar was reelected unopposed in 2002.[26]
In 2001, Minnesota Lawyer named her "Attorney of the Year".[27][28] Klobuchar was president of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association from November 2002 to November 2003.[29]
In 2002, Klobuchar spearheaded an effort that resulted in state laws being altered to allow felony charges to be brought against repeat drunk driving offenders. In 2003, Klobuchar dealt with one of her highest-profile cases when the Hennepin County Attorney's Office brought several charges against former professional baseball player Kirby Puckett related to an alleged sex crime. Puckett was acquitted by a jury of all charges brought against him.[26]
Klobuchar took a "tough-on-crime" approach. At the time she took office, there was a crime wave in Minneapolis, with the city's murder rate much higher than the national rate. Klobuchar had won election on the slogan "More Trials, More Convictions". She pursued heavier sentencing and less favorable plea deals, and sought to bring more cases to trial. By the end of her first year, she had significantly increased the number of cases brought and convictions secured.[30] Under Klobuchar, the Hennepin County Attorney's Office prosecuted people for possession of khat. At the time, it was rare in the United States for prosecutors to pursue prosecution on such charges.[31] Klobuchar also brought felony charges against a number of men for failure to pay child support.[32]
Klobuchar pursued tougher sentencing in hopes of deterring crime. For some smaller offenses, such as vandalism, she regularly sought sentences that exceeded the recommended duration. This was true for both adult and minor defendants. For property crime offenders who had already received five convictions, Klobuchar's office similarly pursued longer sentences than had been recommended.[32] Klobuchar declared that she intended to scrutinize judges who were "letting offenders off the hook too easily". In 2000, a successful appeal by Klobuchar lengthened by two days a sentence that a judge handed to an immigrant defendant, which placed the defendant at a greatly increased risk of deportation. The judge had delivered had been 364 days. A sentence of 365 days or greater was likely to lead to the defendant's deportation, and the two days that Klobuchar added to the sentence placed the defendant over that threshold. An analysis by the Vera Institute of Justice found that during Klobuchar's tenure, there was a 20% increase in the number of prison inmates in Hennepin County, which the analysis attributed to the harsher sentences Klobuchar sought.[30]
During Klobuchar's tenure, the preexisting disparity of African Americans imprisoned at a greater rate than white people decreased in severity. But it remained pronounced,[30] at quadruple the national average, per the Vera Institute of Justice.[32]
Klobuchar successfully prosecuted teenage defendant Myon Burrell for the 2002 murder of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards by gunshot. Both Burrell and Edwards were African American. For much of her subsequent career, Klobuchar highlighted this case, framing it both as an example of her toughness on crime as well as an example of her fighting to provide justice for African-American communities affected by gun crime. Burrell remained steadfast in claiming that he was innocent. In late January 2020, during Klobuchar's presidential campaign, the Associated Press called attention to flaws in the case against Burrell, and quoted a co-defendant in the trial as having admitted that he, not Burrell, had actually fired the shot that killed Edwards.[33] APM Reports also uncovered further consequential flaws with the case against Burrell.[34] Due to these circumstances, his sentence was commuted by the Minnesota Board of Pardons in December 2020.[35]
In 2004, Klobuchar supported the presidential campaign of U.S. senator John Kerry, traveling across Minnesota as a campaign surrogate.[26]
Klobuchar did not prosecute any cases related to police brutality.[36] During her tenure, Hennepin County saw 30 recorded police-involved deaths.[37] Some of these deaths resulted in public controversy, but Klobuchar did not bring any charges.[36] As was common practice at the time, especially in Minnesota, to determine whether to bring charges in such instances, Klobuchar relied on grand jury recommendations.[38] Critics of her use of grand juries alleged that it lacked transparency and was perhaps a tactic for Klobuchar to distance herself from responsibility for the decisions made.[30][38] After the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis Police custody, renewed attention was brought to Klobuchar's tenure as Hennepin County Attorney. She was retrospectively criticized for not prosecuting police misconduct during her tenure. Attention was also brought to the fact that during Klobuchar's tenure an officer-involved killing had occurred that involved Officer Derek Chauvin, who later murdered Floyd. This killing did not result in prosecution. The killing occurred in October 2006, several months before Klobuchar left office, and a grand jury was empaneled by her successor (Freeman, who returned for a second stint as county attorney). The grand jury did not recommend any charges.[39] This renewed scrutiny arose several months after Klobuchar concluded her presidential campaign, and while reporting had named her as a potential running mate of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.[40]
Personal life and family[edit]
In 1993, Klobuchar married John Bessler, a private practice attorney and a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. They have a daughter who graduated from Yale University and worked as a legislative director for New York councilman Keith Powers.[18][125]
Klobuchar is a member of the United Church of Christ[126] and is a cousin of musician Zola Jesus.[127][128]
In September 2021, Klobuchar revealed that she had been diagnosed with Stage 1A breast cancer in February 2021, that she had undergone a successful lumpectomy, and that in May she had completed a course of radiation treatment. In August, her doctors determined that the treatments had all been successful and she was cancer-free.[129]
Klobuchar's grandparents were immigrants from Slovenia's White Carniola region. Her paternal grandfather was a miner on Minnesota's Iron Range.[11][12] Amy's maternal grandparents emigrated from Switzerland to the United States.[130]
Awards and honors[edit]
Klobuchar has received a number of awards during her career. Minnesota Lawyer named her "Attorney of the Year" in 2001[28] and Mothers Against Drunk Driving gave her a leadership award for advocating for successful passage of Minnesota's first felony DWI law.[138] Working Mother named her a 2008 "Best in Congress" for her efforts on behalf of working families, and The American Prospect named her a "woman to watch".[138]
In 2012, Klobuchar received the Sheldon Coleman Great Outdoors Award at a special Great Outdoors Week celebration presented by the American Recreation Coalition.[139] She was one of the recipients of the Agricultural Retailers Association's 2012 Legislator of the Year Award, alongside Republican representative John Mica.[140] In 2013, Klobuchar received an award for her leadership in the fight to prevent sexual assault in the military at a national summit hosted by the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN).[141] Also, in 2013, she received a Friend of CACFP award for her leadership in passing the Healthy Hunger Free Kids act and her efforts to set new nutrition standards for all meals served in the CACFP by the National Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) Sponsors Association.[142] Klobuchar and Senator Al Franken received the 2014 Friends of Farm Bureau Award from the Minnesota branch of the American Farm Bureau Federation.[143] She received the American Bar Association's Congressional Justice Award in 2015 for her efforts to protect vulnerable populations from violence, exploitation, and assault and to eliminate discrimination in the workplace.[144] Also in 2015 the National Consumers League honored Klobuchar with the Trumpeter Award for her work "on regulation to strengthen consumer product safety legislation, on ensuring a fair and competitive marketplace, and increasing accessibility to communications, specifically in the wireless space".[145] In 2016, she received the Goodwill Policymaker Award from Goodwill Industries for her commitment to the nonprofit sector and leading the Nonprofit Energy Efficiency Act.[146] In 2017, she received the Arabella Babb Mansfield Award from the National Association of Women Lawyers[147] and was chosen as the Mary Louise Smith Chair in Women and Politics for the Carrie Chapman Catt Center at Iowa State University.[148] In 2021, Klobuchar received the Award for Distinguished Public Service from the Association of American Publishers.[149]