The Real Amy K

I have a question, actually two.  Who worked harder for Minnesota this year, Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch or U.S. Senator from Minnesota Amy Klobuchar?  And who got paid more to do it?  Two questions, two different answers.  Obviously, Ms. Klobuchar got paid more.

Just as obviously, Amy Koch worked harder, much harder, for Minnesota.  Klobuchar has picked no battles, fought no fights, and couldn't even ask a serious question of Supreme Court appointee Elena Kagen.  She has made no hard choices, voting always to raise taxes and raise spending, irresponsibly so.  Since she makes no headlines, the press showers her with puff pieces instead.

Meanwhile, Amy Koch takes on an irascible, obstinate Governor.  She has to answer to his many friends in the media, some unable to even calculate simple percentages.  She was thought by many to be partly responsible for the shutdown even though the documents involved bore only the one signature needed or valid, that of Mark Dayton.  She even has some of us questioning her role and reasoning in taking Minnesota's state spending still higher, even if we likely did end up in about the same spot.  But raise taxes she did not.  And she clearly helped pass a number of needed reforms.  She got more done and took more heat in one year than Senator Klobuchar has in five.

While I still have doubts about Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Zellers, I thought we had a keeper in Amy Koch, a key player in the unfinished business of finally getting Minnesota's state spending under control.  Ironically, the same commitments to her private life that led to her decision to step down are part of what we like about her and her success in a difficult role.

She never forgets who she is working for.

REALITY CHECK: I know now how easy it is to be a liberal.  You hear what you want to hear, believe what you want to believe.  And even though I've seen such scenarios play out dozens of times in my many years, in both business and politics, I didn't wait for the other shoe to drop.  That she and the GOP again mishandled the publicity a bit is no excuse for my naïveté.

Still, I think Amy Koch deserves the credit above, public successes that I trust had nothing material to do with her private failings. 

Comments

[Hiram]

Actually, it was a pretty low key session in terms of work. That's to be expected when Republicans are in charge for what I think of as a non controversial reason. Republicans don't believe the legislature should do much and so when they are in charge and control the machinery, not much gets done. The logical consequence of that is that legislatures don't have to work very hard at the business of legislating and don't.

On the federal level, legislators work incredibly hard, and this is true of both parties. Their lives are consumed by their jobs to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. The notion that Amy Klobuchar, or for that matter a Republican like Rep. Kline don't work amazingly hard is just absurd.

[Hiram]

There is often a difference between what is convenient to believe, and what is true. The notion that Gov. Dayton is "irascible" is ridiculous. He is the gentlest, most even tempered individual imaginable. Quite honestly, he could use a little irascibility. Gov. Pawlenty was often irascible. In his case, I don't think it made him a better governor but it did make him a more effective governor.

[Speed Gibson]

Mark Dayton is gentle, even tempered? Not even on channel two!

[The Big Stink]

Hiram: We don't know what they do. To say they work incredibly hard is conjecture. What we know is they live and work invisibly. They show their face every election cycle, but what they do after that is guesswork which is alluded to as actual work, but we have no way of knowing for a fact. After all, it's unlikely they're would respond to a crisis by saying "I was doing crossword puzzles and watching 'South Park.' How should I know?"

[Eva Young]

Actually it looks like she is resigning over allegations that she had an affair with a male staffer. Other Senators in leadership confronted her over these allegations, and she chose to resign.