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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Reading her audience: Sen. Klobuchar visits Ely

Keith Vandervort
Posted 9/4/15

ELY – Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke to a very partisan crowd in Ely this week.

No, she’s not running for President.

Not yet.

She had the overflow audience at Vermilion Community …

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Reading her audience: Sen. Klobuchar visits Ely

Posted

ELY – Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke to a very partisan crowd in Ely this week.

No, she’s not running for President.

Not yet.

She had the overflow audience at Vermilion Community College eating out of her hand Monday afternoon as she read passages from her new book, “The Senator Next Door.” Her just-released memoir has been described as heartfelt and humor-filled and she related stories about her family, and life on the Iron Range, in the same way.

Klobuchar’s grandparents lived on Madison Street in Ely. Her grandfather worked in the mines “for a good part of his life” and was a logger after that. She calls Ely her home.

“It is so good to be back,” she started. “We drove in last night from Fargo. It sounds like a bad movie.” Many in the audience didn’t know if they should laugh or not, but they soon were rolling out of their seats as they heard about some of the local characters and stories she related in her memoir.

The title of her book, her husband’s idea, is simply, “You’re supposed to represent your neighbors when you get into political office,” she said. “That’s the whole idea of a democracy. We’ve lost a lot of that in Washington and I wanted to make a case for that idea, about representing your neighbor, even the neighbor you don’t always get along with.”

She related a story about her grandparents’ neighbor who used too much dynamite to dig out a basement. “All the neighbor’s wash (hanging on clotheslines to dry) went down in a one-block area. “Everyone up here still remembers that,” she said. The laughs got louder.

She put many stories in her book about people working together to get things done.

She talked about her father, who was a correspondent for the Associated Press covering the 1960 Presidential election. She said his job that election night was to make an educated guess about the outcome of the Kennedy-Nixon race in Minnesota. In the end, the race came down to three states, including Minnesota, California and Illinois.

“There was huge pressure on him to predict what would happen (here),” she said. “The state was almost 50-50 and one part of the state hadn’t reported their returns. Yep, it was you guys in northern Minnesota.”

She read a passage from her book: “If you grew up on Minnesota’s Iron Range in the middle of the twentieth century, he later said, you knew first that the area had as many bars as churches, and second that Dick Nixon’s prospects in Northeastern Minnesota in 1960 were as bright as the temperance movement’s chances in West Duluth.” The VCC audience roared with loud laughter. The rest is history. Kennedy took the 11 electoral votes from Minnesota.

“That was the year I was born,” Klobuchar continued reading. “It was a year of endless possibilities, a year of new houses, and new cars, and new refrigerators. It was a year that a kid from the Iron Range could write the story calling the Presidential election. It was a year when the country took a risk and elected a youthful and vigorous leader and a Catholic at that. It was a good year to be born in.” Her audience applauded loudly.

She went on to talk about the Slovenians, “which are a major force up here.” Both sets of Klobuchar’s great-grandparents on her father’s side of the family emigrated from the small European country.

“Klobuchar means ‘hat maker’ in Slovenian,” she said. Included in the book is a paragraph on the pronunciation of her family name. “It’s in here guys,” she said. “I’m not going to delve into it, but I promise I did not miss this issue. I’ve come out with it all.”

Again, the crowd roared with laughter and delight.

She then talked about her grandfather who grew up in Ely. “Of all my relatives on the Range, my grandpa, Mike, best embodied the miners’ hard life. The red rock, the work boots. The lunch bucket with the meat pasties …” She mispronounced that word and quickly corrected herself. “I’m going to get in so much trouble,” she added.

The audience loved it.

She continued, “…the drinking binges on Saturday nights followed by Mass on Sunday morning.” She looked out at the crowd as they snickered in acknowledgement. “His face was strong and chiseled like a miner’s version of one of the presidents on Mt. Rushmore. His hands were enormous and stiff and the nerves on his left thumb were permanently damaged in a mining accident.”

She likened her grandfather to Spencer Tracy “especially when he wore a hat.” She said her grandmother, Mary, would always say, “‘your grandfather was a handsome man.’”

She continued describing her grandfather’s life in Ely and his work at the Zenith mine. “Mike Klobuchar was a hard worker. He was soon made a shift foreman,” she read. “Somewhere along the way he met my grandma, Mary Putzel, oldest of eight Putzel children, graduate of Ely Memorial High School and bookkeeper at Grahek’s Grocery and Meat Market. They married in October 1927. At the time of her marriage she was already pregnant with my dad, who was born on April 9, 1928.”

This fact came to light during her research for her book. “Nothing like doing a little research only to find out that not one, but both of your parents were conceived before marriage,” she said. Some in the audience gasped, but most laughed out loud.

She read several passages relating her rise into politics and meeting larger-than-life political figures.

She ran for U.S. Senator when Mark Dayton decided not to seek another term. “I never knew how much money I would have to raise for a Senate run, It’s like $10 million, minimum,” she said. “I decided I would just call everyone I ever knew in my life. I set an all-time Senate record. This is a true story. I raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends.” She brought the house down with that quip. “As John (her husband) points out, that is not an expanding base.” Another collective belly laugh came from the audience.

One last teaser: Klobuchar did her best southern drawl impersonation of a flight attendant who once mistakenly referred to her as Mrs. Al Franken. The audience reaction was priceless.

She then autographed her book for everyone who stood in line in the VCC theater lobby.