Klobuchar visits Charles City, says she’s the ‘Midwestern candidate’

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, calls herself “the Midwestern candidate,” and told potential Charles City voters that she wins elections because she’s not afraid to make her case to rural and conservative voters.

“In three Senate elections, I have won every single congressional district in Minnesota — including all of the red and rural districts,” she said. “I have done that not by selling out on our values, but by meeting people where they are — by going where it’s uncomfortable.”

Klobuchar — on her 59th birthday — made a campaign stop at at the home of Ann and Todd Prichard on Saturday. She is one of more than 20 candidates running for the Democratic nomination for president, and she told the more than 120 people who had gathered that she’s in the race to win it.

“We have to win. We have so many good candidates, and no matter who our candidate is, we’re going to unite behind them,” she said. “But I have the grit to win.”

Klobuchar pointed to a recent poll that had her moving up in early-voting states.

“We’ve moved up to sixth,” she said. “This is a grassroots campaign and we are ready to win.”

Klobuchar announced her candidacy in early February. She is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Minnesota’s affiliate of the Democratic Party, and previously served as Hennepin County attorney, elected in 1998.

She was first elected to the Senate in 2006, becoming Minnesota’s first elected female U.S. senator. She’s been re-elected twice, in 2012 and 2018.

She is a graduate of Yale and University of Chicago Law School and was a partner at two law firms in her home state of Minnesota before being elected Hennepin County attorney.

She told an enthusiastic crowd Saturday that she wants to put an end to the division between rural and urban Americans.

“I am so sick about hearing about this rural-urban divide,” Klobuchar said. “I am in a state where every year I go to all 87 counties, to make the point that we are all one state, and I make the point now that we are all one country. We’re not going to be able to bridge that divide if we can’t even send an email to someone in Iowa.”

She talked about ways to help rural Americans, and included getting them high-speed internet, getting broadband to every household, respecting rural hospitals and rural health care, making sure there are good schools in rural America, and making sure health care works for everyone. She criticized the “bad decisions” made by Iowa lawmakers to privatize Medicaid.

“We need to reduce premiums, and to me that means universal health care with a public option,” Klobuchar said. “You can use Medicare, you can use Medicaid.”

Klobuchar was critical of Republican attempts to take away insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, and said she has led the charge in the U.S. Senate to stop allowing big pharmaceutical companies to jack up prices.

“I will stand tall to defend the Affordable Care Act,” she said. “The big pharma companies think they own Washington — well, when I’m in there as president, they won’t own me.”

Other top priorities for Klobuchar include workforce development, immigration reform, and climate change.

“We’ve gotten out of a bad downturn in our economy, and are at a more stable time. That happened over the last decade,” she said. “Now is the time to govern from opportunity — to go after those problems that we see right in front of us, instead of pretending they aren’t happening.”

She said she wanted to make sure “kids are getting degrees and they can afford them,” and she wanted to make sure the country sees “the economic value of our immigrants.”

“We need workers right now in our fields, in our factories, in our nursing homes — we need people that are going to start small in business and employ new people,” Klobuchar said. “When you look at the arc of immigrants in America, immigrants don’t diminish America, they are America.”

She also talked at length about climate change, particularly how it has impacted the Midwest.

“It’s not just coming, it’s here, and I think a voice from the heartland is very important to taking this on,” she said. “I talk about the tornadoes we’ve seen, about the wildfires that have been raging, I talk about the floods. Homeowners insurance has doubled across this country — that is a fact.”

Klobuchar said she is introducing plans to help farmers, and was critical of the President Trump’s trade policies.

“Maybe President Trump should spend a little less time tweeting and a little more time at the negotiation table,” she said.