A life of achievement … and individuality

10/27/2006

DFL’s Amy Klobuchar grew up in the shadow of her famous father

BY ELLEN TOMSON
Pioneer Press

Amy Klobuchar was 21 and in college when she and her dad biked 1,100 miles, pedaling from Minneapolis to the Grand Tetons in 10 days.

Her father, a globetrotting adventurer, newspaper columnist and source of public pride and private pain, was in the lead, of course. But Amy, undeterred by the grueling ride, whirling tornadoes, a rattlesnake she ran over and their six flat tires, kept pace while listening to the latest songs on her transistor radio and thinking up jokes to make her father laugh.

She had flourished as a teenager, despite her father’s alcoholism, his highly publicized drunken driving arrest and her parents’ divorce. She was named valedictorian of her class at Wayzata High School before heading off to Yale University and was as funny and fun to be with as she was smart, according to friends. They recall she volunteered to wear a fuzzy tiger suit on a stiflingly hot day in a homecoming parade, organized a girls powder-puff football team, and sang and danced in a “Gong Show” talent contest with two friends also named Amy.

No one who knows her well was surprised when she announced she would run for the U.S. Senate against Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy in the coming election, while still working as Hennepin County attorney, overseeing some 170 attorneys who prosecute an estimated 10,000 criminal cases in a year. Klobuchar, a Democrat, has led Kennedy in all published polls. In an average of the last surveys, she led by 15 percentage points.

“She has tremendous energy and has always thrived on doing the next challenge, the next thing — whatever it is,” says Amy Scherber, who has known Klobuchar since they were 5.

Today, Scherber owns and operates three successful New York City bakeries. Klobuchar remembers working at a Baker’s Square restaurant with her friend. While Klobuchar “spilled 12 ice teas on customers,” Scherber won employee of the month. “Clearly, she went on in the food industry and was more successful,” Klobuchar notes.

The wry observation is characteristic of Klobuchar. She’s all seriousness — and somewhat scripted after months of campaigning — but habitually wraps up segments of her conversation with humor, usually focused on her own foibles.

MINNESOTA ROOTS

Klobuchar, 46, is a Minnesota native with roots on the Iron Range and ancestry in Switzerland and Slovenia. She drives a Saturn and lives with her husband, John Bessler, and daughter, Abigail, 11, in a five-room condominium bought 10 years ago for less than $200,000. Abigail attends public school.

Klobuchar met Bessler at City Billiards while playing pool. Their first date was planned as a double date, but the man from the other couple didn’t show up. They saw the movie “Wayne’s World” with the woman who was stood up. Afterward, when they went to dinner, Klobuchar decided Bessler was more interested in the other woman; she excused herself to remove her contacts and put on her glasses.

But Bessler called her the next day. Seven and a half years younger than Klobuchar, he also is an attorney. He’s the author of several books and regarded as an expert on capital punishment. He proposed to Klobuchar in the nonfiction aisle of the now-defunct Hungry Mind bookstore in St. Paul.

The couple married at University Lutheran Church of Hope in Minneapolis. Klobuchar argued with her dad over what to call the bridesmaids. He recalls she instructed him to refer to her female “support group” and male “witnesses” as “the best men and better women.”

She asked both her parents to walk her down the aisle. After taking a few steps, her father says he felt a jab above his ankle, where Klobuchar had kicked him with a pointed slipper. “You’re going too fast,” she told him. “I don’t take this walk every day. This isn’t the two-minute drill, for Pete’s sake.”

The reception was held at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. A political science major, Klobuchar wrote her senior thesis (published as a 300-page book) on the political history of the Metrodome, named after Hubert H. Humphrey. She also worked as a summer intern in Vice President Walter Mondale’s office, and Mondale spoke at her reception.

As a couple, Klobuchar and Bessler normally share household chores and child care. They took turns staying home to feed their daughter through a stomach tube for a year after she was born with a frozen palate that prevented her from swallowing — a problem that was later corrected.

Despite her hectic professional life, Klobuchar says she tries to provide her daughter with a normal existence and points to last summer as an example. Abigail attended camp and a baby-sitting class but mostly “hung out with friends.” Klobuchar notes, though, that Abigail has appeared in about 25 (mostly weekend) parades with one or both of her parents and made at least seven visits to the Minnesota State Fair, where her mother had a booth.

TROUBLES AT HOME

After graduating magna cum laude from Yale, Klobuchar attended the University of Chicago Law School. She returned to Minneapolis in 1985, worked as a lawyer and became involved in DFL politics. Critics have accused her of capitalizing on public recognition of her father’s name. Jim Klobuchar was a Minneapolis sportswriter and popular newspaper columnist for decades.

“Having a famous father can be a two-edged sword,” says Lucinda Jesson, a former deputy Hennepin County attorney who now directs Hamline University’s Health Law Institute. “You want people to think of you as so much more than your father’s daughter. “

Jesson says Klobuchar “is quick, amazingly quick, and really has an ability to focus her mind when she’s thinking about a problem.”

Klobuchar attributes her love of learning, as well as her humor, to her mother, Rose Klobuchar, an award-winning teacher who donned a butterfly costume with a sign “Mexico or Bust” whenever she taught second-graders about monarch butterflies. She didn’t retire from teaching until she was 70.

Rose Klobuchar was the parent Amy and her sister, Beth, could count on at Christmas, for birthdays and other milestones when their father wasn’t present.

The two girls reacted differently to their father’s absences, alcoholism and notoriety. Her sister dropped out of school and worked at entry-level jobs before entering college in her 30s. She moved out of state, changed her first and last name and became a CPA. Although she prefers to remain anonymous, she plans to help her sister campaign next week.

Klobuchar’s father, now remarried a third time and in recovery 13 years, is retired. He also is helping with his daughter’s campaign. At a recent speaking engagement, his host fumbled an introduction and referred to him as “the former Jim Klobuchar.”

“Now I’m Amy’s dad and happy to be identified as that,” Jim Klobuchar said.

Ellen Tomson can be reached at etomson@pioneer press or651-228-5455.

Amy Klobuchar

Personal: 46, married, a daughter.

Professional: Hennepin County attorney, eight years; former partner at Dorsey & Whitney and Gray Plant Mooty law firms; graduate of Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School.

Why me: “It’s time for a change in Washington. We need new priorities and real leaders who will put the interests of the many ahead of the interests of the few.” Familiar messages: Minnesota’s GOP candidates appealed to their base Thursday with a return to Republican-friendly issues of Iraq and immigration.

Online: For previous profiles of all Minnesota candidates for the U.S. Senate and for past coverage of the race, go to http://www.twincities.com.