Why Amy Klobuchar wants to run a state beleaguered by Trump # Why Amy Klobuchar wants to run a state beleaguered by Trump She is pitching herself as uniquely qualified to clean up the messes at home and reset the state’s poisonous relationship with the White House.
inquirer.com · Ernesto Londoño · September 7, 2026
Why Amy Klobuchar wants to run a state beleaguered by Trump
# Why Amy Klobuchar wants to run a state beleaguered by Trump
She is pitching herself as uniquely qualified to clean up the messes at home and reset the state’s poisonous relationship with the White House.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) campaigns for governor at the St. Paul Farmer’s Market in St. Paul, Minn., on July 26, 2026. Klobuchar, the third highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, is running for governor in Minnesota. Read more Jenn Ackerman / New York Times
by Ernesto Londoño, New York Times
Published Sept. 7, 2026, 4:56 p.m. ET
ST. PAUL, Minn. — On a sweltering summer morning, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D.,Minn.) was making small talk with merchants at the St. Paul farmers market when a cheesemaker expressed a sentiment that has kept coming up as Klobuchar campaigns for Minnesota governor.
“We’re going to miss you in Washington,” the cheesemaker, Brenda Carlson, told Klobuchar while bagging a piece of Tilsit.
Klobuchar acknowledged having mixed feelings about leaving her seat as the chamber’s third highest-ranking Democrat. “But we need to get this sorted out,” she said, frowning slightly.
By “this,” Klobuchar meant the current condition of Minnesota, which has become a punching bag in the Trump administration’s quest to portray Democratic-run states and cities as hopelessly dysfunctional.
As she gears up for what could be the capstone of a decades-long political career, Klobuchar is pitching herself as uniquely qualified to clean up the messes at home and reset the state’s poisonous relationship with the White House.
Her reputation makes the case, supporters say: She is known as both a hard-charging workaholic who scrutinizes program details to a fault and a centrist with allies on both sides of the aisle in Washington, including in President Donald Trump’s administration.
But both qualities could also cause friction. Minnesota agencies are bracing for turbulence as Klobuchar vows to audit every state program. And many residents remain shell shocked from the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown early this year, which paralyzed the Twin Cities for weeks and left two U.S. citizens dead.
When it comes to relations with the president, some residents say they want a fighter in the governor’s office, not a conciliator.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer who is facing trial over her role organizing a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a church, said Klobuchar did not speak out stridently enough about the wintertime deportation campaign.
“Many of us felt abandoned by our elected officials during Operation Metro Surge,” Levy Armstrong said. “We felt abandoned by Amy Klobuchar in particular.”
In an interview, Klobuchar said she was “as angry about some of the things Trump has done as anyone.”
“But I have decided that I’m going to get us to a higher place and not act like him,” she said. Her first goal, she added, “is to earn back the trust of the people of Minnesota in state government.”
For now, Minnesota Democrats have expressed almost uniform relief that Klobuchar is their nominee rather than current Gov. Tim Walz.
They began 2026 in panic mode as a scandal over widespread fraud in state-run safety net programs dogged Walz’s bid for a third term. State lawmakers openly fretted that his name at the top of the ballot in this year’s midterm elections would give Republicans a strong shot at winning the governor’s mansion for the first time in two decades and controlling the tightly divided Legislature.
“I would definitely be lying if I said that the worry meter wasn’t ticking up, up, up by the week,” said state Rep. Mike Howard, a Democrat from the Twin Cities.
They exhaled when Walz dropped his reelection bid in early January, as the Trump administration was sending thousands of immigration agents to the state in what the president called a campaign of “RECKONING & RETRIBUTION.”
Klobuchar announced her run for governor later that month as Minnesotans were reeling from the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two American citizens shot by immigration agents in Minneapolis. “These times call for grit and resilience,” Klobuchar proclaimed.
The announcement amounted to a reversal of fortunes for Democrats, making Klobuchar the clear favorite in the general election race against Lisa Demuth, the Republican speaker of the Minnesota House. Even far-left lawmakers in the state Capitol — where the party has a one-seat majority in the Senate and is tied in the House — have emerged as enthusiastic surrogates for Klobuchar.
“People in the Democratic Party here in Minnesota understand she’s our best path to winning a majority and defending ourselves from Donald Trump,” said state Sen. Zaynab Mohamed, a member of the democratic socialist wing of the party.
Klobuchar kicked off her run by calling all 101 Democrats in the Legislature, keeping several on the phone for more than an hour. There was talk of campaign strategy, lawmakers said, but Klobuchar was most interested in their policy goals.
When she ran for president in 2020, Klobuchar was the subject of several critical articles depicting her as a perfectionist and difficult boss whose office had among the highest turnover in the Senate.
Klobuchar has a tendency to personally tackle tasks most elected officials delegate and to fire off all-caps emails to aides, which often land in inboxes between midnight and dawn.
Some supporters now call that feverish approach an asset.
State Rep. Zack Stephenson, the Democratic leader in the Minnesota House, recalled being startled by a 3 a.m. email from Klobuchar in 2006 when he served as a lowly aide in her first Senate campaign.
“The lesson I took away from that race is that to be successful in politics, the secret is to work really hard,” he said.
The sense of relief extends to Democratic voters like Carlson, the cheesemaker, who says she has soured on Walz, a former schoolteacher and coach who oversaw the adoption of a raft of progressive policies and made a splash on the national stage by running for vice president in 2024.
In recent years, Carlson said, small-business owners like herself have grown frustrated by tax increases and red tape that seem to grow each year. Then came revelations about rampant fraud in state programs meant to feed low-income children, treat minors with autism, and help people at risk of homelessness.
“I just think things got away from him when he did the whole run,” said Carlson, 54, who lives in Center City, a conservative town 40 miles north of the Twin Cities. “He couldn’t keep a watchful eye, and whoever was wasn’t doing their job.”
She said she hoped Klobuchar would be different.
That is the senator’s pitch.
Having enthusiastically backed Walz’s vice-presidential bid two years ago, Klobuchar has now distanced herself from him.
She kicked off her campaign in May by announcing a detailed plan to combat fraud. Evoking the years she served as the elected county prosecutor in Minneapolis, she stood alongside the former U.S. attorney in Minnesota against a backdrop of law books.
“You are right to be angry about the fraud,” Klobuchar said at the time.
Klobuchar has also questioned how Walz and allied lawmakers spent a $17 billion surplus in 2023. After Walz granted a pardon in June to a man convicted of child sexual abuse who was facing deportation to Laos, Klobuchar said she would have let the conviction stand.
A spokesperson for Walz did not respond to a request for comment.
Demuth, the Republican candidate for governor, has sought to portray Klobuchar’s bid as a de facto third term for Walz, questioning why she wasn’t outspoken about the fraud problem before jumping into the race.
“She will not be able to enact the changes that are desperately needed,” Demuth said in an interview.
Klobuchar has called Demuth a “rubber stamp for Donald Trump.”
But how Klobuchar will approach the Trump administration — and