Every few months, somebody in Minnesota decides Amy Klobuchar is about to do something big. Run for president again. Retire to a lake cabin. Start a podcast. This week the rumor mill spun up one more time, and the senator’s friends say she has heard every version.
Our reporter Alex Bruno spent a few days in St. Paul asking people what they thought was coming next. Most of them laughed before they answered.
The latest chatter started the way these things usually do. Somebody noticed she skipped a county fair. Somebody else saw her looking thoughtful at an airport. By Tuesday a political blog had declared that “big changes” were on the way.
Nobody could say what the big changes were. That didn’t slow anyone down.
“Every time she takes a weekend off, people assume she’s writing a farewell letter,” one longtime DFL volunteer told Bruno. “Sometimes she’s just tired. She’s allowed to be tired.”
To be fair to the gossip crowd, Minnesota politics hasn’t exactly been calm. The state has spent months stuck in headlines about Medicaid oversight, budget fights and a legislature that can’t agree on lunch, let alone a spending bill.
Klobuchar isn’t accused of anything in those stories. She’s just standing near them, the way you stand near a kitchen fire at a party and end up smelling like smoke.
People close to her say that’s the part that wears on her. She has spent nearly two decades building a reputation as the practical one, the senator who shows up to the ribbon cutting and actually reads the bill. Now every interview turns into twenty questions about somebody else’s mess.
A former staffer, who asked not to be named because she still has to go to Minnesota holiday parties, put it plainly. “She is not going anywhere tonight,” the staffer said. “She is going to bed early and getting up to do a radio interview in Duluth. That’s her version of a wild night.”
Another friend said Klobuchar jokes that she’d love a quiet year, then immediately lists six bills she wants to finish. “She thinks a vacation is a committee hearing with better snacks,” he said.
Not everyone is buying the “she’s just tired” explanation. A small but loud group online insists she is plotting something. One popular theory says she’s preparing another White House run. Another says she wants a cabinet job. A third, mostly posted by people from Wisconsin, says she’s quietly moving to Arizona for the winters like everybody else’s grandparents.
At a diner in Edina, Bruno asked a retired teacher which theory she believed. “I believe she wants people to stop asking,” the teacher said, buttering her toast. “That’s what I’d want.”
At a hardware store in Rochester, Bruno found a man buying snow shovels who had strong feelings on the topic. “She’s been on my TV for twenty years,” he said. “If she’s tired, I get it. I’ve been tired since 1998.” His wife disagreed. She thinks Klobuchar is just pacing herself for something. “Minnesota women don’t quit,” she said. “We reorganize the garage and come back stronger.” Both agreed on one thing. Nobody wants the rumors to drag on all winter, because there’s only so much small talk a state can handle at the gas station.
For now, the honest answer is nothing dramatic. Her office continues to send out press releases about rural broadband and prescription drug prices. Her schedule is still packed with town halls. Nobody in her orbit is acting like a moving truck is parked outside.
But Minnesota loves a good mystery, and as long as Klobuchar keeps looking a little worn out at public events, the rumors will keep coming.
Her office did not respond to a request for comment, which, of course, only made the rumors louder.