My Daughter, the Senator
Jim Klobuchar on what it's like being Amy's dad
Minnesota Monitor is doing a series of interviews with everyday Minnesotans, some famous, some not so famous. Jim Klobuchar, mountain climber, author, raconteur, former Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist and — oh, by the way — father of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, is someone sort of in between. We interviewed him by e-mail over the course of the past week.
Leigh Pomeroy: OK, Jim, we can take this leisurely, so there's no rush... So, you suddenly find yourself as the father of a U.S. senator — a lady senator, no less! Did you ever in a million years think this might happen when you were raising your family?
Jim Klobuchar: It was not the kind of cosmic vision that nourished my life and interfered with sleep. From her earliest years you could guess that hers was going to be a life of involvement. As a grade schooler, she was stimulated by all of the widening horizons opening up in her life and, at home, by the news on television and, thank God, in the newspaper. As a 7-year-old she produced Christmas plays in our living room, writing the script and coaching the cast. The cast consisted of her younger sister, her mother and herself, when she could break away from the director's chair. I was assigned the role of the audience. She probably should have coached the audience, too, because I received bad notices from the director for not applauding with the required exuberance.
She excelled in school, played center on her girls' touch football team, followed the Vikings when I wrote pro football and once scared the daylights out of me when she was 11 by asking whether Joe Kapp, the roughhouse quarterback in the late 1960s, was married. But I don't think I seriously considered the possibility of national office until Amy was well into her first term as the Hennepin County Attorney and began making the rounds of the television and radio news shows. A Bloomington stockbroker nearly tackled me after I spoke one night at a hotel gathering. He asked if I'd heard this story Amy was telling at her interviews and getting hilarious responses. I told him I hadn't but that I was warily interested in hearing the story.
"Terrific story," he said. "It was about your attempts to put a new diaper on her younger sister. I could just see you fumbling mindlessly and making a royal mess out of it. It was a good thing that Amy, age 4, was around to straighten you out."
"What did she say?"
"She said as a pre-schooler she had to step in to prevent you from unintentionally strangling her infant sister with a diaper."
I told him the story was essentially true. I also thought that if this woman was capable of running an office of 175 lawyers and to perform the serious work of public service without smothering her intrinsic fascination for some of the wackiness of life, she might be on track for something higher.
LP: You're in Washington as I ask this next question — and I certainly can't blame you for not getting back to me right away — but putting diapers aside, when did Amy first tell you she was thinking of running for the Senate and what was your reaction?
JK: Mark Dayton announced that he would not run for re-election to the Senate nearly two years ago, well enough in advance to give potential DFL candidates time to consider and count their resources. Amy's name was mentioned prominently in the first wave of speculation. She was then in her second term as Hennepin County Attorney and was popular among party regulars and with the public. The job was still challenging, but life was relatively serene. A Senate race was something she hadn't considered.
She looked at what lay ahead. She could run for a third term as county attorney with safety, or run for attorney general if Mike Hatch ran for governor. She thought about governor but Hatch had time-in-grade in the state offices and she thought she had to defer to that seniority. She talked to people who either knew the terrain or knew her well — Fritz Mondale; others in the party; her husband, John; her daughter, Abigail; her mother. She talked to me. The opinions she got were pretty much unanimous. They all wanted her to go for it because she was Amy, she had something to give and to say, she flourished as a campaigner and she understood Minnesota's strengths and needs.
She called one day in early spring and asked if I had any plans for April something or other.
"Why do you ask?"
She said: "I'm going to run for the Senate and I'd like to announce it in Mom's yard where I played when I was growing up."
I said I had no conflicting plans for that date. I was elated and worried. A year and a half campaigning is a marathon. A hundred things could blow up. She needed millions of dollars. There was Rove and there were the blindside attack hounds. I asked if she was ready. She laughed. "Do you want me to play it safe?"
Well, I said, no. I thought she could win if the money came. It didn't exactly come. She raised it, day and night. And then the crowds of support came and she was on her way.
LP: So you're back from D.C. and all the hype and pageantry of the swearing-in and accompanying hoo-ha. Now it's down to work.
But first, a digression. Now that two of my friends have been elected to Congress — Amy Klobuchar and Tim Walz — how do I address them? Do I call them Senator and Congressman or Amy and Tim? Or does it depend upon the circumstance?
You've been in journalism for a long time and have made friends with a lot of folks in "high places." What's the protocol?
JK: If you're an old pal of the newly elected, Tim and Amy are perfectly fine. If you want to be ultimately friendly and ultimately respectful, you might say Congressman Tim or Senator Amy — not likely, but I like that sort of thing, something like Father Pat when you're addressing a priest who's an old friend.
Addressing them when others are present, and particularly with an audience, protocol almost always dictates the respectful form. Amy has known Walter Mondale all of her adult life and always refers to him in a group as Vice President Mondale. In her debates she practically always referred to Mark Kennedy as Congressman Kennedy. I like that. I think I'd also like it if I were the congressman or senator.
References to Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the early going are usually going to run up against the familiar form of address dating back to her candidacy. She was so widely known and popular after a time that the simple "Amy" immediately identified her. It was both affectionate and handy. I think we'll see a lot of that in the first few months of her tenure, and I don't think she'd be offended at all.
If I met Betty McCollum on the street I'd probably say, "Hello, Betty." Congresswoman McCollum takes some doing and some stamina. I'm sure she's conditioned to it, and not offended.
As the arbiter of good manners taught, courtesy essentially is a matter of common sense.
LP: End of digression. We've heard Amy — er, the senator — expound on many issues. But what is her burning issue? What are the one or two or even three things she wants to get accomplished during her tenure? I mean, has she ever said, "Dad, this is what I really want to change"?
JK: The news today is Iraq.... But unless the Democrats shut down the government, there isn't much they can do in any decisive way to prevent Bush from going ahead with one more fantasy by escalating the war. Amy wants no additional troops in Iraq and she will go to the wall on that. Most people of political sanity don't want that, either. But when (Bush) starts deploying, they're going to be on the ground quickly, and it will be impossible for the Democrats to freeze them out of the money needed to maintain them. So she's asked, "Would you withhold money under those conditions?" and she has said if they're on the ground, they're our men and women. No, she wouldn't withhold money under those conditions. But the fight in Congress is evolving and she will be heard from on this....
Amy wants to bear down on what for years has been a lost cause but now is serious stuff with the American public, and that is wringing corruption out of the operation of the American government. Being square with the people is a major commitment with her. She wants legislation that will insulate the people from the broad-daylight theft of billions of dollars from the public treasury and the crooked dealing, congressional people on the take, lobbyists writing the laws their paymasters dictated, letting the slimy deals sail through Congress and the White House, the public kept in the dark about where the money is really coming from and how much of it is going to corporate profiteers.
Bringing ethics back to government is a polite way to say all this, but what it comes down to is restoring to the American public some workable reason to trust their government again. If you need private commissions to monitor congressional ethics, do it. The gouging of gullible taxpayers while billions of dollars are being skimmed from the treasury with unprecedented tax cuts for the wealthy is one of the epic debaucheries of American history. She wants strict accountability in Congress; if you're going to promote a piece of legislation to bring federal money into your district or your state, let the record show that you were the promoter. Some of the money may be warranted; some of it may not. Let the public know.
Her agenda includes the boost in the minimum wage now working its way through Congress. It includes serious progress in insuring millions more Americans, especially children not now covered. She wants across-the-board coverage for all Americans eventually. She knows it isn't going to happen tomorrow morning, or this year. It will have to come incrementally, but there's no reason why you can't start in 2007. Minnesota is ahead of the country. Schwarzenegger is making it happen in California. She wants to get new energy into saving the public schools in America and that means pulling the country out of denial about an impending catastrophe. She knows that privatizing the schools isn't the answer.
LP: Sounds like her plate is full, as is all of Congress's. Seems like there's a lot of catching up to do. Let's touch base later to see how Senator Amy is doing. One final question: Has your daughter's success increased your book sales at all?
JK: I haven't inquired about book sales since Amy's election. The bookstore people have filed no reports of carnage at the store entrances provoked by readers panicking over the possibility of my books being sold out. I have taken this news stolidly, in the best stiff-upper-lip tradition of the Iron Range.
Minnesota Monitor is doing a series of interviews with everyday Minnesotans, some famous, some not so famous. Jim Klobuchar, mountain climber, author, raconteur, former Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist and — oh, by the way — father of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, is someone sort of in between. We interviewed him by e-mail over the course of the past week.
Leigh Pomeroy: OK, Jim, we can take this leisurely, so there's no rush... So, you suddenly find yourself as the father of a U.S. senator — a lady senator, no less! Did you ever in a million years think this might happen when you were raising your family?
Jim Klobuchar: It was not the kind of cosmic vision that nourished my life and interfered with sleep. From her earliest years you could guess that hers was going to be a life of involvement. As a grade schooler, she was stimulated by all of the widening horizons opening up in her life and, at home, by the news on television and, thank God, in the newspaper. As a 7-year-old she produced Christmas plays in our living room, writing the script and coaching the cast. The cast consisted of her younger sister, her mother and herself, when she could break away from the director's chair. I was assigned the role of the audience. She probably should have coached the audience, too, because I received bad notices from the director for not applauding with the required exuberance.
She excelled in school, played center on her girls' touch football team, followed the Vikings when I wrote pro football and once scared the daylights out of me when she was 11 by asking whether Joe Kapp, the roughhouse quarterback in the late 1960s, was married. But I don't think I seriously considered the possibility of national office until Amy was well into her first term as the Hennepin County Attorney and began making the rounds of the television and radio news shows. A Bloomington stockbroker nearly tackled me after I spoke one night at a hotel gathering. He asked if I'd heard this story Amy was telling at her interviews and getting hilarious responses. I told him I hadn't but that I was warily interested in hearing the story.
"Terrific story," he said. "It was about your attempts to put a new diaper on her younger sister. I could just see you fumbling mindlessly and making a royal mess out of it. It was a good thing that Amy, age 4, was around to straighten you out."
"What did she say?"
"She said as a pre-schooler she had to step in to prevent you from unintentionally strangling her infant sister with a diaper."
I told him the story was essentially true. I also thought that if this woman was capable of running an office of 175 lawyers and to perform the serious work of public service without smothering her intrinsic fascination for some of the wackiness of life, she might be on track for something higher.
LP: You're in Washington as I ask this next question — and I certainly can't blame you for not getting back to me right away — but putting diapers aside, when did Amy first tell you she was thinking of running for the Senate and what was your reaction?
JK: Mark Dayton announced that he would not run for re-election to the Senate nearly two years ago, well enough in advance to give potential DFL candidates time to consider and count their resources. Amy's name was mentioned prominently in the first wave of speculation. She was then in her second term as Hennepin County Attorney and was popular among party regulars and with the public. The job was still challenging, but life was relatively serene. A Senate race was something she hadn't considered.
She looked at what lay ahead. She could run for a third term as county attorney with safety, or run for attorney general if Mike Hatch ran for governor. She thought about governor but Hatch had time-in-grade in the state offices and she thought she had to defer to that seniority. She talked to people who either knew the terrain or knew her well — Fritz Mondale; others in the party; her husband, John; her daughter, Abigail; her mother. She talked to me. The opinions she got were pretty much unanimous. They all wanted her to go for it because she was Amy, she had something to give and to say, she flourished as a campaigner and she understood Minnesota's strengths and needs.
She called one day in early spring and asked if I had any plans for April something or other.
"Why do you ask?"
She said: "I'm going to run for the Senate and I'd like to announce it in Mom's yard where I played when I was growing up."
I said I had no conflicting plans for that date. I was elated and worried. A year and a half campaigning is a marathon. A hundred things could blow up. She needed millions of dollars. There was Rove and there were the blindside attack hounds. I asked if she was ready. She laughed. "Do you want me to play it safe?"
Well, I said, no. I thought she could win if the money came. It didn't exactly come. She raised it, day and night. And then the crowds of support came and she was on her way.
LP: So you're back from D.C. and all the hype and pageantry of the swearing-in and accompanying hoo-ha. Now it's down to work.
But first, a digression. Now that two of my friends have been elected to Congress — Amy Klobuchar and Tim Walz — how do I address them? Do I call them Senator and Congressman or Amy and Tim? Or does it depend upon the circumstance?
You've been in journalism for a long time and have made friends with a lot of folks in "high places." What's the protocol?
JK: If you're an old pal of the newly elected, Tim and Amy are perfectly fine. If you want to be ultimately friendly and ultimately respectful, you might say Congressman Tim or Senator Amy — not likely, but I like that sort of thing, something like Father Pat when you're addressing a priest who's an old friend.
Addressing them when others are present, and particularly with an audience, protocol almost always dictates the respectful form. Amy has known Walter Mondale all of her adult life and always refers to him in a group as Vice President Mondale. In her debates she practically always referred to Mark Kennedy as Congressman Kennedy. I like that. I think I'd also like it if I were the congressman or senator.
References to Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the early going are usually going to run up against the familiar form of address dating back to her candidacy. She was so widely known and popular after a time that the simple "Amy" immediately identified her. It was both affectionate and handy. I think we'll see a lot of that in the first few months of her tenure, and I don't think she'd be offended at all.
If I met Betty McCollum on the street I'd probably say, "Hello, Betty." Congresswoman McCollum takes some doing and some stamina. I'm sure she's conditioned to it, and not offended.
As the arbiter of good manners taught, courtesy essentially is a matter of common sense.
LP: End of digression. We've heard Amy — er, the senator — expound on many issues. But what is her burning issue? What are the one or two or even three things she wants to get accomplished during her tenure? I mean, has she ever said, "Dad, this is what I really want to change"?
JK: The news today is Iraq.... But unless the Democrats shut down the government, there isn't much they can do in any decisive way to prevent Bush from going ahead with one more fantasy by escalating the war. Amy wants no additional troops in Iraq and she will go to the wall on that. Most people of political sanity don't want that, either. But when (Bush) starts deploying, they're going to be on the ground quickly, and it will be impossible for the Democrats to freeze them out of the money needed to maintain them. So she's asked, "Would you withhold money under those conditions?" and she has said if they're on the ground, they're our men and women. No, she wouldn't withhold money under those conditions. But the fight in Congress is evolving and she will be heard from on this....
Amy wants to bear down on what for years has been a lost cause but now is serious stuff with the American public, and that is wringing corruption out of the operation of the American government. Being square with the people is a major commitment with her. She wants legislation that will insulate the people from the broad-daylight theft of billions of dollars from the public treasury and the crooked dealing, congressional people on the take, lobbyists writing the laws their paymasters dictated, letting the slimy deals sail through Congress and the White House, the public kept in the dark about where the money is really coming from and how much of it is going to corporate profiteers.
Bringing ethics back to government is a polite way to say all this, but what it comes down to is restoring to the American public some workable reason to trust their government again. If you need private commissions to monitor congressional ethics, do it. The gouging of gullible taxpayers while billions of dollars are being skimmed from the treasury with unprecedented tax cuts for the wealthy is one of the epic debaucheries of American history. She wants strict accountability in Congress; if you're going to promote a piece of legislation to bring federal money into your district or your state, let the record show that you were the promoter. Some of the money may be warranted; some of it may not. Let the public know.
Her agenda includes the boost in the minimum wage now working its way through Congress. It includes serious progress in insuring millions more Americans, especially children not now covered. She wants across-the-board coverage for all Americans eventually. She knows it isn't going to happen tomorrow morning, or this year. It will have to come incrementally, but there's no reason why you can't start in 2007. Minnesota is ahead of the country. Schwarzenegger is making it happen in California. She wants to get new energy into saving the public schools in America and that means pulling the country out of denial about an impending catastrophe. She knows that privatizing the schools isn't the answer.
LP: Sounds like her plate is full, as is all of Congress's. Seems like there's a lot of catching up to do. Let's touch base later to see how Senator Amy is doing. One final question: Has your daughter's success increased your book sales at all?
JK: I haven't inquired about book sales since Amy's election. The bookstore people have filed no reports of carnage at the store entrances provoked by readers panicking over the possibility of my books being sold out. I have taken this news stolidly, in the best stiff-upper-lip tradition of the Iron Range.
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