Klobuchar, Amy Jean

Klobuchar, Amy Jean, Senator from Minnesota, 1960- , b. Plymouth, Mn,, Yale University (B.A., 1982), University of Chicago Law School (J.D., 1985). Klobuchar is of Slovenian and Swiss descent, with her father a newspaper sports columnist and her mother an elementary school teacher. As her senior thesis at Yale, she wrote a history of the building of the Metrodome in Minneapolis that was subsequently published as a monograph (1986). After college, she attended law school at the University of Chicago, and was associate editor of the school’s law review. After pursuing private practice in Minneapolis, she ran abortively for Hennepin County attorney in 1994, and then successfully in 1998, serving two terms. In 2006, she was elected for the first time to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first woman to win election to that position in the state. She has proven to be an effective legislator, building coalitions for her bills. In February 2019, she announced her intention to run for the Democratic nomination for president as a mainstream candidate with roots in the “heartlands,” but suspended her campaign 13 months later to support Joseph Biden. Klobuchar played a key role at Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. She currently is serving her third term in the U.S. Senate.

See her autobiography (2015); Uncovering the Dome (1986), Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age (2021).

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