Minnesota. Guest i were the first pair of pants to be worn at beacon heights. He was a Public School and its 10 below zero and i warm up the flowered bell bottom pants. I was so proud of these pants and sure enough i was called into the office, the principal who have this enormous beehive haircut and i still remember to this day. Im sitting there trembling in the chair and she says you can wear your trousers and your culottes and i think she said and your pantaloons at home but it peaked in high school you wear dresses. I literally got a permission slip, watch him to my house through the woods down the hill and changed into addressing came home. And i shed a few tears i will say that much today gradea use that example of why i wrote the book, to show how spirit all changing culture that i ended up being able to wear pants, being able to be the girl that could respond to the world and start a petition drive. At that moment i did what she said and the one little tangent to that story is that when the book came out i actually got a call from someone and he said this is ron and im the son of your principal. Im like oh no. He said i didnt like what you said about my mom. I said ron its true. She really did take me out and he said, and what you said about her hair was a beehive. I said ron i checked on the internet and she had a beehive. I had a lot of respect for her and all of a sudden you hear this laughter this boy says it was al franken my colleague faking that he was the son of the principal but thats how the book started. Host one of the things i took from that story is that the process to learn how to stand up for yourself in a situation like that. It takes some time especially for a girl to figure out how to do that. Guest i think we are seeing the change and one of the reasons i wrote this and its not just about girls but trying to get people from regular background growing up in a middleclass neighborhood in the suburb. I can run for something or at least i can get involved in the political process and for me, my teachers were incredible mentors back then. She wasnt that nice but a lot of the other teachers are the ones that got me out the front of the door when my mitten got stuck or my wild fourth grade teacher with a bright red here who would literally stand in the back of the class and yell, speak louder, i cant hear you when i gave presentations. She would write my report card which i found when i was writing the book, louder. She would put a space between each letter and those are the people that influenced my life. They made it easier for me is the one ahead that i found every step of the way from way back when to the last few years when i went to asia with john mccain and all the male leaders. They would start the meeting and look over at lindsay because he was a second man and john john would say no senator klobuchar is the democratic leader so you will address her next. So i think those people may have helped others along the way in what this book is about. Host in the book the senator next door you write a lot about your family. You write a lot about your dad who was a long time and much beloved columnist and andy worked for the Associated Press. In fact in the year you were born he played a really Important Role in a president ial election. Tell us about that. Guest my dad was actually the one that called the election and this was a situation where illinois, california and minnesota were the last three stakeouts. It was all about california ended up going to nixon. So there is my dad, young reporter and the Associated Press office. This is what happened. I got the tribune with my dad which was a lot of fun and verified from an 87yearold. My dad told george moses, that was his boss. His dads name was moses. He had little doubt the region and minnesota would go for kennedy. If you grew up on minnesotas iron range in the middle of the 20th century he later said you knew first that the area had as many bars as churches and second that nixons prospects in northeastern minnesota in 1964 is bright as the Temperance Movement in west duluth. He emphatically told moses that in northeastern minnesota a workingclass, kennedy would most likely pick up more than twothirds of the vote and thus when the state and if kennedy won minnesotas 11 electoral votes that would put him over the top. After hearing his two reporters out of moses placed a call to the ap in new york sample admin. We are going to elect kennedy he told black man. I have two words for you guys in minneapolis he said pausing before adding with great emphasis, the right. So it was that my dad to go to wordsmith of the hour then in his early 30s got the chance to write the National Story that declared john f. Kennedy the victor in minnesota and thats the next president. His sweaty fingers flew across this old underwood typewriter hammering the keys furiously with no time to follow the usual protocol of three carbon copies underneath. United press international beating to the punch with hand a page to moses containing only a single paragraph at a time. Moses would check a copy or typos and then run it over to the teletype operator paragraph by paragraph. Without a carpenter review and with each page including only a small piece of the story my dad kept yelling to the teletype operator rob, how does that last paragraph and . After a night of little sleep bob would yell back with a period jim, with a period. My dad story calling the election for kennedy sent out across the wires at 12 33 p. M. Eastern time, so this is the next day, appeared in newspapers across the country and james reston of the New York Times explained the next day the calling of the race in minnesota was monumental. At 12 33 reston wrote senator kennedy clenched minnesota and the election. 30 minutes later mr. Nixon made his formal concession. After nixon conceded my dad celebrated the groundbreaking story with moses and johnson. Nice work doing the story moses told him. I almost died twice and barely missed the hernia but the party was my dad went to lunch at a swedish cafe and returned to the office. There he was given his next assignment. Three pigs were stuck in the mud pit near fair abode minnesota. He dug in and wrote a story. So that was the year i was born, youre been those possibilities. New houses in new cars and new refrigerators and the kid from the iron range of minnesota could write a story calling the president ial election, you run the country took a risk and elected a youthful and vigorous leader and a catholic at that. Was a good year to be born in. Host that is a story that a journalist would love and they ended up getting it right. Guest dave asbo who just retired from the ap found some of the old writings from the ap to help confirm that goes on to really go back and remember those. Host when you were born, when you were little girl your dad was covering every things, politics and sports, do you think he thought that girl is going to be u. S. Senator . Guest i dont know. My dad always had ambitions for me. I think he wanted me to be a judge. That was the big dream but he always encouraged me and inspired me and we would go on these crazy bike trips together that were 1200 miles in 11 days and those kinds of things. He really taught me how to persevere. When you go 100 miles in a day and your dad says i think we can do 20 more thats a lesson in perseverance. Host although the story about these marathon bike riders to mothers are terrifying. You write about wearing no, going 145 miles. Guest this is a monday. Host you write in one point i got on my bike and i pretended i had fallen. He did not buy that. Guest i think part of it was he was writing about the story in the newspaper so we have a map showing our progress but the second part was that most of these trips were after my parents got divorced. This was really away, a gift from him in my mind for us to get to know each other again, wayford teenager who didnt want to sit and have long dinners with her dad and talk about what was happening with his love life, this was actually much better way and i think my dad found a great way. Host your parents got divorced partly because of your dad struggle with alcoholism. We are fully aware what he was dealing with . Guest when i was young i did not and around the time i was born there really wasnt that bad at all. He wasnt drinking that much but it got worse as time went on a part of it was the reporter back then. He would go to drinks with pops and with foot of coaches and he was covering the vikings at the time with a highflying life. In the other part of it was his own background. My grandpa was an iron or work or working 15 feet underground and never graduated from high school and my grandpa would go to the bar overtime and drink in my dad grew up seeing now. Whatever it is he clearly was an alcoholic and start his twodrink more and more, oftentimes secretly. When i was growing up i remember being at in a car with him when he went off the road after football game. No one was hurt but it was clearly because he was drinking. We got home and he cried and he told me he wouldnt do it again. Then he had dwis drinking related arrests. Back then in the 70s they didnt do much about it. Host because he was a prominent person. Guest exactly and finally before my wedding i believe in 1993, he got a third dwi driving related incident with alcohol and this time the laws have changed and this time it was treated very seriously. I went in there with him and the lawyer and also the counselor and talk to the judge and we went through everything that happened throughout our lives. He said he stopped ringing for a while and i believed him but then he would go back and he finally went through treatment and literally that was when he found redemption. He wrote a book about how his religion and faith helped him get through that time. He speaks about it all the time to different faith groups and his whole life has been turned around. Hes happily married for the for for third time so i was able to see not only the difficulties and the badness of alcoholism and the effect it has but i was also able to see my dad in that redemption. Host he is open about it. Was it hard to write about it in your book . Guest my dad has written a lot about it. They made it over different but for me personally to tell my story yes. Obviously i showed it to him ahead of time because i wanted to make sure he was okay with it he was a hard thing because you have to sit back and think about the effect. About what it meant to me and to my mom and my sister. Host there was another family crisis that helped propel you into a political career and this is when your daughter was born. Tell us what happened. Guest well my daughter when she was born she couldnt swallow. They came in and got us in the middle of the night and they said shes very sick, she cant swallow. They thought there was a tumor and they thought she might have Cerebral Palsy and they couldnt figure out what was wrong. She was in intensive care with tubes and Everything Else and back then you got kicked out of the hospital in 24 hours. Even if the baby was in intensive care and i had no sleep at all. They are trying to give me all the stuff on. It was really a difficult thing and when she started to get better it took a year and a half but somewhere in the middle she was still set by tubes for a year and a half. I went to the legislature and worked with the legislators and realized you could go to the legislature and talk about things like episiotomies and embarrass the a hold mail legislature. We got one of the first 48hour hospital stays. They had done that it in some other states and the president ended up taking it up on the National Level but i also learned how to get things done so i ended up at the committee. People couldnt say they were against it but somewhere trying to delay it. I brought six pregnant women to the Conference Committee that were friends of mine and they outnumbered the lobbyist 21. When the Legislature Said the pregnant moms they did need the weighted to august 1. It. Host tell us how your daughter is doing now. Guest she is doing much better. Shes a great kid. She is sick a lot growing up because she was so small. She was eyes in the bottom 1 for the first three or four years and she canned kind of came out of that with swallowing therapists and doctors. It was a unique condition. She is a lot of fun and she also didnt mind having the story told. I dont know the would have been her choice. Host you know theres a thread that goes the new year through your new book. Its summed up by a writer who you quoted. Obstacles in the path are not obstacles. They are the path. What does that mean to you . Guest to me that means everyone will have things and a lot of people had a lot worse problems than i did. The key is what you do with them and how the move on and do you try to gain strength from what happens to you and then try to help other people . I guess a lot of people who become Public Servants and i try to kate make that case in the book that not everyone is a cartoon character chaired duking it out everyday. There are a lot of people that go into it for the right reasons and a lot of that has to do with things that have happened to them in their lives either in elected office so that is a lot of what i do in my job and i view these things have happened to me as gifts and i dont mean that in a pollyanna schwabe but they made me understand how those parents of kids with permanent disabilities feel and how difficult that is. I got involved in that issue and what its like to have alcohol in the family and how that led me to work as a prosecutor with some of the treatment bills that we have right now. Host minnesota has some legendary politicians from Harold Stassen t. Hubert humphrey and of course Walter Mondale who has played a role in your political career. How did you meet him . Guest Walter Mondale of course was someone that everyone still loves in minnesota and i first got involved in working with him when i was in college and i applied for an internship when he was the Vice President. I ended up getting that job. It was so glamorous. I showed up my bursting the executive office building. I show up in my assignment, ready to write a big policy was the furniture inventory of every piece of furniture that Vice President office. It took three weeks weeks and as i like to tell kids weeks and has elected to a gifted intern for me that was my first government job and this is my second so take it seriously. Host what did you take Walter Mondale was somebody that you knew and what did you take from his career from what he taught you either he told viewer by example . Guest the ability that he has is something that is missing in todays politics. Ive tried my best to practice how he would treat people. Still when i was working with them later at the law firm the republicans would call him, howard baker and other people to talk about issues. He didnt use a lot of heated rhetoric. Some people make fun of him for being too norwegian but i think there was value to that. I think there was some guy you was some guy you to that and it certainly helped them to get things done. Host when you are becoming more politically active your selfie were addressing the Democratic National convention in 2004 and he gave you some advice. I wonder if you would tell that story and read some of that . Guest the background here is that john kerry, im elected county attorney and john kerry is running for president. Was my first major involvement in being a speaker and in fact the first time that kerry came to minnesota and i introduced him and i made a rookie mistake. I had memories to two minute speech and i said i give to you my first line. The next president of the United States john kerry. They so obviously think im done and comes and puts his hand up my shelter and he says i know youre not done yet. Host and that the right in the book that you had such a strong grip on the microphone. Guest when i got to the senate he said yeah it was being nice but i know i can get away from you. This is actually later they had me speak at the Boston Convention and this is an example of what a great man he was. I got the speech together. It was only three minutes long. I had a joke. It wasnt even that funny words that im going to end with the words of someone famous from texas. What america wants is something as good as its promise. That was the background and they told me could knew that. The morning of the speech Walter Mondale came up to me. You have memorized your speech, right . Theres a teleprompter instead. I should be fine. No that isnt viney said. Remember the time of the these convention when carter said horatio hornblower. I remember i said that he was that i teleprompter screwup he said. Dont trust it, memorize your speech. This seemed a little out of date but even so id memories my speech. Ive turned up at the appointed hour and found myself backstage with Chuck Schumer and Charlie Rangel and it county attorney. Dont ask me why the conventions organizers put me together with that highpowered congressional crowd but they did. It was a pretty good speaking fund and the Convention Hall was fairly full. Senator leahy started into his speech but after half a minute he stopped and looked around. The teleprompter had to gone dark. He made a joke about it by suggesting the malfunction was tied to a wellpublicized fight he recently had with Vice President dick cheney. Eventually someone brought out a copy of senator leahys remarks. Oh my god i thought were stood waiting at the corner of the stage i could see Walter Mondale. He was sitting right there in the front row. I made eye contact with him and i have never seen a more pointed i told you so not in my life. I nodded back. After senator leahy finished his remarks i stepped up to the podium. Someone gave me a printed copy of my speech and at some point after i launched into it the teleprompter came back to life but i rarely look at it and i never looked at the printed copy. Thanks to Walter Mondale, i had memories my speech and i looked only at t