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Amy Jean Klobuchar ( ; 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.
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 became Minnesota's senior senator in 2009, when Norm Coleman left the Senate following his defeat. She was reelected by a landslide in 2012, winning 85 of the state's 87 counties, before being reelected again in 2018. Klobuchar's political positions align with modern liberalism. She has focused on healthcare reform, consumer protection, abortion rights, agriculture, and climate change.
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. In 2021, she became the chair of the Senate Rules Committee. She was reelected to a fourth Senate term in 2024, defeating Republican nominee Royce White.
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.
She attended public schools in Plymouth and was valedictorian at Wayzata High School, where she was also class treasurer and secretary.Dzhanova, Yelena, and Hurwitz, Kelsey, "Most Likely to Be President," New York, April 1–14, 2019, p. 12 She received her Bachelor of Arts Latin honors in political science in 1982 from Yale University.1982 Yale Banner, p. 394. While at Yale, Klobuchar spent time as an intern for then-Vice President and former senator Walter Mondale. Her senior thesis, Uncovering the Dome, 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 with high honors in 1985.
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. 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.
In 2001, Minnesota Lawyer named her "Attorney of the Year"."Amy Klobuchar." Gale Biography Online Collection. Gale, 2007. Retrieved via Gale In Context: Biography database, September 17, 2019. Klobuchar was president of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association from November 2002 to November 2003.
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.
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 , 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. 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. Klobuchar also brought felony charges against a number of men for failure to pay child support.
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. 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 gave an immigrant defendant, which placed the defendant at a greatly increased risk of deportation. The judge had originally imposed a sentence of 364 days. A sentence of 365 days or greater was likely to lead to the defendant's deportation, and the two days Klobuchar added 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.
During Klobuchar's tenure, the preexisting disparity of imprisoned at a greater rate than white people decreased in severity. But it remained pronounced, at quadruple the national average, per the Vera Institute of Justice.
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. APM Reports also uncovered further consequential flaws with the case against Burrell. Due to these circumstances, his sentence was commuted by the Minnesota Board of Pardons in December 2020.
In 2004, Klobuchar supported the presidential campaign of U.S. senator John Kerry, traveling across Minnesota as a campaign surrogate.
Klobuchar did not prosecute any cases related to police brutality. During her tenure, Hennepin County saw 30 recorded police-involved deaths. Some of these deaths resulted in public controversy, but Klobuchar did not bring any charges. 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. 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. 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.Multiple sources:
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.
In the general election Klobuchar faced Republican candidate Mark Kennedy, Independence Party candidate Robert Fitzgerald, Constitution candidate Ben Powers, and Green Party candidate Michael Cavlan. Klobuchar led in the polls throughout the campaign, and won with 58% of the vote to Kennedy's 38% and Fitzgerald's 3%, carrying 79 of Minnesota's 87 counties. She is the first woman to be elected U.S. senator from Minnesota. (Muriel Humphrey, the state's first female senator and former second lady of the United States, was appointed to fill Hubert Humphrey's unexpired term and not elected.)
At the end of the 114th Congress in late 2016, Klobuchar had passed more legislation than any other senator. In February 2017 she called for an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate ties between Russia and President Donald Trump and his administration. Concern about Trump's ties to Russia increased after reports that his campaign officials had repeated contact with senior Russian intelligence officials before the 2016 United States elections. Klobuchar had already signaled her interest in U.S.–Russia relations in December 2016 when she joined Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham on a trip to the Baltic states and Ukraine. She maintained high approval ratings throughout 2017, with an April 2017 Star Tribune poll placing her approval rating at 72%. In October 2017 Morning Consult listed Klobuchar among the 10 senators with the highest approval ratings, and a November 2017 KSTP-TV poll put her approval rating at 56%. An April 2019 Morning Consult poll found Klobuchar to be the third-most popular sitting senator, with a 58% approval rating and 26% disapproval rating, behind only Vermont senators Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy.
According to the Center for Effective Lawmaking, Klobuchar scored "above expectations" with respect to how successful she was at moving significant legislation in the 115th Congress (2017–18).
During the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination hearings in 2018, Kavanaugh gave heated responses to Klobuchar's questions about whether he had ever experienced memory loss after consuming alcohol, for which he later apologized.
There has been negative publicity about Klobuchar's treatment of her staff throughout her tenure in office. In February 2019, BuzzFeed News reported that interviews with former staffers and reviews of emails indicated that Klobuchar frequently abused and humiliated her employees, requiring significant staff time to manage her ire. The article reported that other employees found her to be "fair and effective" and a good boss. Politico reported that Klobuchar had the highest annual staff turnover rate of any senator—36%—between 2011 and 2016. A Huffington Post article alleged she had a reputation for mistreating her staff, with some staff alleging she was prone to bursts of cruelty. In response to the negative reports, 61 former staffers wrote an open letter praising Klobuchar, stating that she was a caring "mentor and friend" to them.
In the 115th Congress, she was absent for 0.5% of votes, with two-thirds of the senators missing more votes. In the 116th Congress (Jan 2019–Jan 2021), during her campaign for president, as of January 2020, she missed 39.1% of votes, making her the 5th most absent member of the Senate.
Klobuchar was at the U.S. Capitol when Trump supporters stormed it on January 6, 2021. As ranking Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, she and Senator Roy Blunt co-led Senate deliberations during the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count. She also served as a teller, along with Blunt, Representative Rodney Davis, and Representative Zoe Lofgren. After Senate Republicans, led by Senator Ted Cruz, objected to certifying Arizona's electoral votes, Klobuchar participated in the debate on the Senate floor. Shortly after she gave her remarks, the Capitol was breached. As the Senate adjourned, Klobuchar was alerted on her phone that shots were fired inside the Capitol, which she announced to those present. Immediately, Klobuchar, fellow senators, staff and journalists were evacuated from the chambers to a secure location. When the Capitol was secure, Congress reconvened and the election count was certified in the early morning of January 7. Klobuchar supported the certification. Later that day, Klobuchar said she supported the invocation of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution to remove Trump from office "because you cannot have a president basically leading an insurrection against our own country's government." She also called for investigations into the breach.
Klobuchar was the first speaker at Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, 2021.
Klobuchar has served as the chair of the U.S. Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee since 2015. She became the steering chair of the committee in 2017, with Bernie Sanders as the outreach chair. Both represented the Democratic Party in a 2017 televised debate on healthcare policy and the possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act on CNN.
In 2020, Klobuchar was speculated to be a possible candidate for secretary of agriculture or United States attorney general in the Biden administration.
On February 10, 2019, Klobuchar announced her candidacy in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. She has said that she uses humor as one way to distinguish herself among the many other Democratic candidates in the 2020 campaign.
On January 19, 2020, The New York Times editorial board endorsed Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren for president.
On March 2, 2020, the day before Super Tuesday, Klobuchar suspended her campaign and endorsed Joe Biden.
On May 21, 2020, it was reported that Biden asked several women, including Klobuchar, to undergo formal vetting for consideration as his vice-presidential running mate. On June 18, Klobuchar withdrew herself from consideration, saying that Biden should choose a woman of color.
According to GovTrack, Klobuchar passed more legislation than any other senator by the end of the 114th Congress in late 2016. According to Congress.gov, , she had sponsored or co-sponsored 111 pieces of legislation that became law.
In 2023, the Lugar Center ranked Klobuchar in the top fifth of senators for bipartisanship.
Klobuchar is a member of the United Church of Christ and is a cousin of musician Zola Jesus.
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. In July 2024, Klobuchar announced that she was still cancer-free after she underwent a small surgery and brief radiation treatment.
Klobuchar's grandparents were immigrants from Slovenia's White Carniola region. Her paternal grandfather was a miner on Minnesota's Iron Range. Her maternal grandparents emigrated from Switzerland to the United States.
In 2012, Klobuchar received the Sheldon Coleman Great Outdoors Award at a special Great Outdoors Week celebration presented by the American Recreation Coalition. She was one of the recipients of the Agricultural Retailers Association's 2012 Legislator of the Year Award, alongside Republican representative John Mica. 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). 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. Klobuchar and Senator Al Franken received the 2014 Friends of Farm Bureau Award from the Minnesota branch of the American Farm Bureau Federation. 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. 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". 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. In 2017, she received the Arabella Babb Mansfield Award from the National Association of Women Lawyers and was chosen as the Mary Louise Smith Chair in Women and Politics for the Carrie Chapman Catt Center at Iowa State University. In 2021, Klobuchar received the Award for Distinguished Public Service from the Association of American Publishers. In 2024, Klobuchar received the Distinguished Public Service Award from The American Legion.
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