Painful times with dad helped create drive to succeed
2006-10-09
Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune
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rss feedThe first two times Amy Klobuchar's famous father was arrested on a charge of drunken driving, she was just a kid. When it happened again, in 1993, she was an adult and a successful attorney. This time she could do something for him.
They met with an addiction counselor just days after Jim Klobuchar, a columnist for the Star Tribune, had prostate surgery. As he lay on a couch, she built her case: She described the birthdays he had missed, how she had searched for him when he disappeared from her college graduation, the times she had taken away his car keys, the damage that he had inflicted on his marriage.
Then she walked over and hugged him. "I love you, Dad," he recalls her saying. "But you have to change."
The determination she showed then is at full throttle now in the political fight of her life, a nationally watched U.S. Senate race.
She is facing a barrage of Republican ads attacking her eight-year record as Hennepin County's chief prosecutor, and juggling competing roles as a high-profile Democratic candidate and a mom worried about getting her 11-year-old daughter home to do schoolwork. Nevertheless, Klobuchar, 46, is hurtling down the final stretch of the campaign well ahead in polls.
But then, she's had her eye on the job, or one like it, for as long as she can remember.
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