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Get to Know the Extremely Well-Known Amy Klobuchar
You're forgiven for not having read the two memoirs produced by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), 2015's The Senator Next Door: A Memoir from the Heartland and 2023's The Joy of Politics: Surviving Cancer, a Campaign, a Pandemic, and the Insurrection—Plus What Comes Next. A lot of distracting end-times stuff has happened between those publication dates, plus there's always something good streaming on TV. As Klobuchar awaits her election-day anointment as Minnesota's next governor, dutiful Minnesota Reformer reporter Michelle Griffith read both books to assemble this abridged, autobiography-gleaned account of the workaholic centrist's personal and political life. Some highlights...
- After matriculating to Yale University as valedictorian of Wayzata High School, Klobuchar authored a 215-page senior thesis on the politics of building the Metrodome. It would later become a book, which you can still buy. She interned for Vice President Walter Mondale as a sophomore, and attended the University of Chicago's law school after graduating from Yale.
- She was influenced by her father Jim positively through his work as a celebrated Star Tribune columnist, but also by his mistakes caused by alcoholism. "When the police came, they let [my dad] go home and that was the end of it," she wrote in The Senator Next Door of being in the car during a drunk-driving accidents. "But I was scared. He told me he was sorry and that he would never do it again. I remember he cried.”
- Her tough-on-crime tenure as Hennepin County Attorney included the high-profile wrongful conviction of a teen, Myon Burrell, as well as early signs of her eventually notorious treatment of staffers. "Amy Klobuchar has demonstrated her disdain for the very employees that have placed her in the position to run for the office she now seeks," an AFSCME Council 5 leader wrote in 2006.
- In the Senate, she works hard and "enjoys being awake"—i.e. not sleeping, per The Joy of Politics. "Even when Klobuchar has taken on powerful opponents, like the pharmaceutical industry or Big Tech, the foes tend to be deeply unpopular," Griffith writes, citing oh-so-Klobucharian bipartisan achievements (safer pool drains, widespread broadband internet) while noting that major donors, like evil Minnesota-based insurance giant UnitedHealth, were spared mention in her 2021 book, Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age.
- She's cagey to a fault. Similar to this protracted Minnesota State Fair ordeal with Racket, Klobuchar predicts the Vikings will finally win a Super Bowl if/when she becomes governor... a bold bet she hedges by attributing it to her running mate, Ben Schierer. Klobuchar gonna Klobuchar.
At any rate, here's the big Klobuchar vs. Lisa Demuth gubernatorial hopeful debate from Wednesday...
And Speaking of Amy, Who’s Behind These Suspicious Mailers?
You, fine Racket reader, may well be to the left of Amy Klobuchar on many issues. And you may have received some curious mailers in recent weeks attacking the senator on those issues: U.S. funding of the Israeli military, single-payer health care, her record as Hennepin County Attorney. You may even have read the fine print and wondered who “Citizens for Public Safety Transparency” is and whether, to put it bluntly, they’re right-wingers out to rat-fuck Klobuchar’s gubernatorial campaign.
The Strib’s Briana Bierschbach and Kim Hyatt set out to learn more about this shadowy group. The Delaware phone number listed went unanswered. The Walker, Minnesota, return address belongs to an office that does not rent space to any such group. Klobuchar’s campaign is investigating whether the group is colluding with the Demuth campaign, which denies any involvement. Anyway, nothing to allay your justified suspicions here!
Who Killed Joe Eder? A Community Searches for Answers.
On the morning of Sunday, August 30, Joe Eder's body was found in a yard near Portland Avenue and 43rd Street in south Minneapolis. He had been stabbed to death, with his Subaru sitting in the bike lane mere yards away, keys still in the ignition.
Nearly two months later, KARE 11 reports there are almost no answers about the "bizarre murder" of this 47-year-old father of two. He texted just before 8:30 p.m. on August 29 with plans to visit his sister and brother-in-law at their Richfield home. He stopped his car near 43rd Street. And... that's about the extent of the information anyone has so far.
"We haven't progressed past that day," Susie Eder, Joe's older sister, tells KARE 11's Kent Erdahl. "In my brain it's still... what happened to Joe?"
Eder's family members and neighbors who live near the spot where his body was found are hoping someone will come forward with details that could help explain what happened. As for the police investigation? The Minneapolis Police Department declined an interview, telling KARE only that the investigation is "active and ongoing."
Sleeping in Cars Could Soon Be Legal*
That asterisk is an important one: Minneapolis City Council is weighing in on a new policy that would allow unhoused folks to park in designated lots at night for sleep. A committee passed the measure 6 to 1 on Tuesday; the full council will vote on the proposal next Thursday.
If it passes, designated lots would have staff on site, and would be required to provide restrooms and trash receptacles. Drugs, alcohol, weapons, and fires would not be permitted, and quiet hours would be observed. “I cannot stress the importance of having safety, any sense of stability and dignity,” Grace Gerhard, a trans woman who lived out of her car for a year, told the committee this week. “It can do so much to get us back on our feet.”
The program would be modeled after Duluth’s Safe Bay, which launched in 2023. Project manager Joel Kilgour tells Cari Spencer of MPR News that the program has managed to find housing for 25 families this year alone and has won over neighbors and nearby businesses. “We just got to meet people where they’re at and provide multiple entry points,” he says.
