MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is many things, a former prosecutor, wife and mother who now can add another title to the list: Former presidential candidate.
Just days before her announcement Monday that she was dropping out of the battle to become the Democratic presidential nominee, Klobuchar set an ambitious itinerary of campaign events in 11 different states.
A seemingly improbable task for any political road warrior. But, then again, we're talking about someone who often covered hundreds of miles on bicycle treks with her father.
The Minnesota senator's political career has focused on solving problems, and the problem Sen. Klobuchar is trying to solve now as an underdog in the democratic primary field is making herself known to as many people as possible.
When asked at a recent debate what her motto as candidate is, she answered, she quoted the late Sen. Paul Wellstone.
"He said, 'Politics is about improving people’s lives' and that’s been my life."
Klobuchar has been the chief author or co-sponsor of at least 100 bills in her 13 years in the US senate. And, while she voted in favor of the landmark Affordable Care Act, much of her legislation has been aimed at specific problems.
For example, she championed the cause of families who couldn't find medication for their children going through chemotherapy. She passed a bill designed to make swimming pools drains safer after a Minneapolis child was fatally injured by one.
Klobuchar cites the new Stillwater Bridge over the St. Croix River as a visual example of one of the bipartisan deals she helped engineer.
"People thought that was never going to happen because it had been sitting around trying to get done for decades, basically. And we were able to get everyone in the Senate to agree to an exemption to the law that allowed us to build that bridge, with both Republicans and Democrats on board," Klobuchar told KARE.
She has touted that approach to politics as something voters can connect with as she has molded her moderate stances. That has served her well in Minnesota where she has attracted independents and Republicans in her statewide races.
It hasn't always served her well in the presidential primary field, where candidates are vying for the most passionate and active democrats. But she believes her personal story will resonate with voters once they know her better.
At a recent stop in Nevada she joked the journalists and campaign volunteers are probably tired of hearing about her family's working-class roots, but she feels compelled to keep repeating those stories for those who don't know her.
"I know you guys say, 'I’ve heard them say tell that story five times, the coffee can in the basement.' There are millions of people who say, 'Oh wow! I didn't know that'!"
The cash in the coffee can in the basement -- her grandfather's version of savings account -- that enabled her father, Jim Klobuchar, to go to college. Mike Klobuchar, the son of Slovenian immigrants, worked in the iron ore mines in Minnesota's Iron Range and wanted a better life for his children.
Jim went on to become an award-winning journalist and household name in Minnesota as a columnist for the state's largest newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. They married public school teacher Rose Heuberger and they settled in Plymouth, where their first daughter Amy was born in 1960.
In her 2015 autobiography "The Senator Next Door" Klobuchar talks about her father's struggles with alcoholism, and her parents' divorce when the future senator was 15 years old. Her early jobs included babysitting, working at an A & W and a pie restaurant.
Klobuchar wrote her first book, "Uncovering the Dome," while at Yale. It was an outgrowth of her senior essay, the story of the political battles that led to the construction of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.
That sports complex was named for one Minnesota political giant. During college Klobuchar interned for another one, then-Vice President Walter Mondale. They have remained friends, and Mondale to this day is still one of Klobuchar's most ardent supporters.
She earned her law degree at University of Chicago and worked as a private sector attorney for more than a decade at Minneapolis law firms Dorsey and Whitney and Gray Plant Mooty.
Klobuchar met her future husband, John Bessler, in 1992. Bessler, a Mankato native, was an attorney at a different law firm. Klobuchar wrote that by the time she discovered Bessler was seven years younger than her they were already well on their way to marriage.
It was daughter Abigail's complications at birth that led to Klobuchar's first real foray into political activism. Abigail was born with a condition that kept her from swallowing properly, but the insurance company enforced the "drive-thru delivery" standard at the time that new mothers had to leave 24 hours after giving birth.
Klobuchar lobbied at the State Capitol to require insurers to cover up hospital stays up to 48 hours for new moms.
"Taking on the insurance industry to guarantee new moms and their babies a 48-hour hospital stay when my daughter was sick in the hospital," Klobuchar told KARE in 2006. "It gave me faith that government can get things done."
In 1998 then-Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman ran for governor. That created an opening for Klobuchar to run for that post. She won that year, and was re-elected in 2002, spending eight years as Hennepin County Attorney.
She won her first Senate race in 2006, besting Congressman Mark Kennedy. She spent part of that campaign on crutches after a hip replacement surgery. A recent medical report from her doctors said the only medication she takes is ibuprofen for occasional hip pain.
In 2012 she won re-election, topping Republican Rep. Kurt Bills by a large margin. In 2018 she defeated Republican Rep. Jim Newberger by an impressive margin.
Earlier that year she made the national spotlight as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearings for then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Klobuchar asked him he had ever blacked out while drinking, and he replied, "No, have you?!"
That raw moment went viral, and Kavanaugh later apologized for his response.
Throughout 2018 Klobuchar fended off rumors she was planning a run for president. But she made it official on Feb. 10, 2019 at Boom Island, a city park along the Mississippi River framed by the Minneapolis skyline.
The TV cameras couldn't pick up that skyline, though, because of driving snow that fell. But Klobuchar went ahead, undaunted, and worked it into her routine.
"On both my mom and my dad’s side they arrived in this country with nothing but a suitcase. It was cold. Okay, maybe not as cold as this!" she quipped.
She invested much of her energy into the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire. And, after a surprising surge to third place in New Hampshire, Klobuchar was faced with the task of quickly scaling up her campaign operation so she could compete in 14 Super Tuesday states all at once.
