Excerpt: Amy Klobuchar's 'The Senator Next Door'

ByABC News
August 29, 2015, 11:44 AM
Book jacket for Amy Klobuchar's book, "The Senator Next Door."
Book jacket for Amy Klobuchar's book, "The Senator Next Door."
Henry Holt and Co.

— -- Excerpted from The Senator Next Door: A Memoir from the Heartland. Copyright © 2015 by Amy Klobuchar. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Co. All Rights Reserved.

PROLOGUE:

In my early campaigns people would sometimes come up to me at a grocery store or at a shopping mall and say, “I know you from somewhere.” They would look at me intently and ask, “Is it the PTA? Do you live in my neighborhood?”

Always trying to be respectful, I would say things like, “I don’t think so, but maybe you saw me on TV. I’m your county attorney.” Or, “Actually, I’m running for the United States Senate.”

“No,” they’d respond, “that’s not it. Are you sure you don’t live down the street?”

As the years went on I figured out it was much easier if I just answered, “I don’t exactly live on your block, but you can always think of me as the senator next door.”

I got the idea for the title of this book from my husband, who has heard me talk to many constituents over the years and shares my view that politics is at its best when you listen and learn from the people you represent. To me a public servant should have both the grounding and the compassion to carry the common sense and good will of his or her neighbors into the political arena. And when in that arena, whether it be a city hall or the U.S. Senate, that public servant should be expected to work honestly and collaboratively with others who were presumably elected to do the same thing.

I know this description of American government might seem better suited to a high school textbook than a contemporary political memoir. And I am well aware that our polarized politics—egged on by supersized outside spending by interest groups on the left and the right—has taken us further and further away from the ideal of value-based and, for that matter, neighbor-based governing. But that is the very reason I wrote this book. At a time when our politics has become increasingly pungent, and politicians are more often lampooned as cartoon caricatures than portrayed as public servants, it is worth remembering why we have this representative democracy in the first place. As elected officials, we were sent to the halls of government by our neighbors to do their work—and much work needs to be done. Remembering our shared experiences with the people we represent makes us better and more accountable civil servants.

So this is my story about how I went from leading my suburban high school’s prom fundraiser, a Lifesaver lollipop drive, to winning a seat in the United States Senate. It’s about tackling all the obstacles I encountered along the way—my parents’ divorce, my father’s alcoholism and recovery, tough decisions as a prosecutor, my political campaigns, and Washington’s gridlock—with good intentions and, whenever I could, some good humor.

It’s about my immigrant grandparents who settled in Milwaukee, and my Slovenian-American grandpa who spent his life working fifteen hundred feet underground in the mines in Ely, Minnesota. He never graduated from high school, but he saved money in a coffee can so he could send my dad to college. Both my mom’s and my dad’s parents devoted their lives to making sure their children had a better future. My mom and dad carried on from there, both serving the public—she as a teacher, he as a newspaperman. They taught me not only to approach my work with a public purpose, but also to set expectations high for myself, my family, and for everyone I work with.