IS KLOBUCHAR CLUELESS?

Amy Klobuchar may be the only person in Minnesota who thinks the crime rate in Minneapolis is something to brag about. If Klobuchar is bragging about lowering Hennepin County's serious crime rate, than she must think Minneapolis' crime rate (the largest city in Hennepin County) is acceptable.

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Klobuchar's Iron Range roots run deep
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate's columnist father was from Ely

VIRGINIA - U.S. Senate Democratic candidate Amy Klobuchar doesn't have to worry about name identification - at the least on the Iron Range.

She knows the area well, and many in the area know the Klobuchar name well. Her father, former StarTribune columnist and author of many books, Jim Klobuchar, is an Ely native who retold many Iron Range stories in the column he wrote for about 30 years for the Twin Cities' largest newspaper.

But Amy Klobuchar has made a name for herself in recent years as Hennepin County attorney. Now she wants the Klobuchar name to have U.S. Sen. before it.

"I have a good feeling about support up here. There are a lot of relatives and a lot of friends. Over the Fourth of July, I made seven parades and the support was really nice. People are not happy with what's going on," said Klobuchar during a recent visit to Virginia.

Klobuchar is one of four Democrats seeking the party's nomination for the 2006 Senate election. Current Democratic Sen. Mark Dayton announced several months ago that he would not seek re-election. Klobuchar, missing children's advocate Patty Wetterling and longtime party activist Ford Bell have all said they would abide by the DFL Party endorsement. Twin Cities businessman Kelly Doran, however, has said he will run in the primary if he doesn't receive the endorsement.

Klobuchar has strong credentials on many core DFL issues that find favor with the liberal party activists who will be in the majority at the convention and will ultimately decide who will win the endorsement. But she is quick to point out that her campaign is not about the political extremes of liberal and conservative that often frame the two parties and many of their candidates.

She is pro-choice on the abortion issue, while also stressing the need to reduce the number of abortions and promote more adoptions. She is a strong advocate for labor and unions, while also pointing out that job creation is linked to ensuring that businesses have a fair playing field, especially in competition with other nations globally. She is a solid environmentalist, but also emphasizes that new technology and one of the nation's oldest resources - coal - can work well together on such projects as the Excelsior Energy coal gasification enterprise for the Iron Range, which she supports. She says the Iraq war was mismanaged from the start by the President George W. Bush Administration, but also says that while an exact date for withdrawal should not be announced at some point, now is not the time.

"I will not let this election campaign be about what's right and what's left. It is going to be about what's right and what's wrong," she said.

The best campaign promise she can make, Klobuchar says, is that she will always be trustworthy. "I believe that when you make promises you keep them; that when you tell someone something you are saying exactly what you mean and you are sincere about it."

Klobuchar points to her record as county attorney - an office she was elected to in 1998 and then re-elected in 2002 without opposition - as evidence that she follows through on what she says. Her campaign Web site offers specifics.

"As the County Attorney, my priorities have always been clear and upfront:

• We've targeted career criminals and violent offenders for aggressive prosecution.
• We've kept predatory sex offenders off the streets both by criminal prosecution and civil commitment.
• We've focused on white-collar financial crimes and crimes committed against seniors and vulnerable adults.
• We've worked more closely with schools to make sure kids are safe and to help them stay in the classroom and out of the courtroom."

Klobuchar says that focus has helped to lower the serious crime rate in the county by 20 percent since she took office.

Klobuchar lives with her husband, John, and 9-year-old daughter, Abigail, in the Twin Cities suburb of Plymouth. But her family's Iron Range roots run deep.

She said that once following a courtroom debate with another attorney, the lawyer told her she was "... nothing but a street fighter from the Iron Range. I took that as quite a compliment," she said.

And she also feels how her father introduces himself to groups where he speaks during the campaign is indeed another compliment.

"He now tells people, 'Hi, I'm Jim Klobuchar, Amy's dad,'" she said. Source: Mesabi Daily News, September 12, 2005