Klobuchar cruises to landslide victory

11/08/2006

Minnesotans for the first time elected a woman to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday as DFL candidate Amy Klobuchar won a landslide victory.

Patricia Lopez,
Star Tribune
Last update: November 08, 2006 – 3:10 AM

Minnesotans for the first time elected a woman to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday as DFL candidate Amy Klobuchar won a landslide victory.

A beaming Klobuchar, flanked by her husband and 11-year-old daughter, took the stage at a St. Paul hotel at 10 p.m. to explosive cheers, pounding drum music and chants of “Amy, Amy!"Today you had the chance to raise your voice for change,” she told the crowd, “and you did it.”

Klobuchar called her GOP rival, Mark Kennedy, “a tenacious, hard-working opponent with a supportive family, and we wish them our best.”

Two and a half hours after the race was called, Kennedy conceded.

The Sixth District congressman told assembled Republicans at a Bloomington hotel that he had “pride in a campaign well fought.”

To a largely subdued crowd who had seen most constitutional officers falling behind in early returns and who still awaited decisive results in the governor’s race, Kennedy said that “there is no shame in defeat. There is only shame if you don’t fight.”

In the end, he said, this was “not our year.”

There had been little suspense about the race from the day’s start, when a Minnesota Poll tracking poll showed Klobuchar with 55 percent to Kennedy’s 34 percent and exit surveys showed her with a margin of nearly 30 points.

Independence Party candidate Robert Fitzgerald remained in the low single digits.

Since statehood, only one woman has represented Minnesota in the Senate and that was Muriel Humphrey, in an 11-month appointment in 1978 following the death of her husband, Hubert Humphrey.

Should final vote tallies resemble the early numbers, a Klobuchar victory would be historic in another sense: No DFLer running for the Senate has racked up more than 50 percent since Humphrey in 1976.

In fact, U.S. Senate races have been close in Minnesota for nearly two decades. Not since 1988, when Republican Dave Durenberger got 56 percent, has a candidate of either party gotten more than a bare majority.

Gender a quiet factor

In the end, the Senate race became what Republicans had dreaded: a referendum on President Bush and the Iraq war. In overwhelming numbers, those surveyed said their decision turned on those issues.

By mid-evening, Klobuchar’s campaign was fielding multiple calls from national media outlets eager to report on a race that Republicans had once called their best chance at a pickup in the country.

Klobuchar also heard from former President Bill Clinton and a host of women senators congratulating her on entry into what is still a very small club—14 women senators now and only 34 in U.S. history.

In making her case to voters, Klobuchar, the Hennepin County attorney, never highlighted gender in her race against three-term GOP Congressman Kennedy.

Klobuchar nevertheless reaped the benefit of strong and early support from national women’s political groups and a lopsided gender gap among voters.

In a phone interview, Klobuchar said the decision to downplay gender had been a conscious one, although she carried with her the knowledge of how many female candidates before her had tried and failed.

At the State Fair, Klobuchar said, an elderly woman in a walker had come up to her and said she’d been waiting more than half a century for Minnesota to send a woman to the Senate. “I thought, this is the burden of history,” Klobuchar said. “It’s exciting.”

By early summer, Klobuchar had nailed down a substantial lead, with ads that promoted her experience as a prosecutor and tapped into widespread voter discontent with Washington.

Kennedy, by contrast, distanced himself from Bush and tried to market himself as an agent for change in Washington, despite having been part of the ruling party for six years.

After the September primary, Klobuchar never fell below 50 percent in any major poll, while Kennedy remained mired in the low 40s, saddled with his support for an unpopular war and a voting record closely aligned with Bush.

“Kennedy never connected emotionally with people,” said Bill Morris, a longtime political observer, pollster and former state Republican Party chairman. “He never established empathy with the middle class.”

With a personality that read as cool on television, Kennedy was at a charisma disadvantage compared to the ebullient Klobuchar, a hugger who lavished smiles on supporters and often toted along her daughter, Abigail, who appeared in several commercials.

Kennedy mounted vigorous attacks on Klobuchar’s lack of hands-on courtroom experience and the rising crime rate in Minneapolis, but the darts never seemed to wound.

‘Teflon’ candidate

“Klobuchar ran a good campaign and she was extremely focused, but it was like she was Teflon,” said Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report. “Nothing really stuck to her. Voters weren’t listening. For them, it was all about what was going on nationally.”

On Iraq, Klobuchar argued for diplomatic solutions and gradual withdrawal, Duffy said, “and Kennedy talked about ‘stay the course.’ “

Duffy said Klobuchar also overcame one of the historic vulnerabilities of female candidates—the fear that they may not be tough enough.

“What helped her most was being a prosecutor,” Duffy said. “That was her toughness credential.”