If he were so inclined, I think Governor Walz could rewrite the Paul Simon song subtitled “How I Was Robert McNamara’d into Submission.” In Walz’s case, it would go “How I was Nancy Pelosi’d Into Submission.” The lyrics would explain how he was Nancy Pelosi’d into submission by Amy Klobuchar, or perhaps how he was Klobber’d into submission. I told the public part of the story in the Examiner column “Exit Tim Walz, stage Biden.”
Walz has now folded his campaign for an absurd third gubernatorial term. To say that Walz is the worst governor in Minnesota history does not come close to doing justice to his case. Like the children of Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon, our Minnesota governors have mostly been above average, with a dip here and there. Walz has plumbed the depths of political turpitude while refusing to take responsibility for the catastrophe over which he at least bears supervisory responsibility.
Now Senator Klobuchar has cleared the field to take Walz’s place as the DFL candidate for governor. She is the most popular Democratic officeholder in the state, but the “Let’s Go Crazy” Dems were out in full force at precinct caucuses in Hennepin County this past Tuesday evening. Klobuchar was not quite crazy enough for them. In (Minneapolis’s) Senate District 62. represented by the ideologically fetid Omar Fateh, Klobuchar was Klobber’d by Uncommitted. Still, she klean’d up statewide despite many protest votes.
🚨 Here are the straw poll results for Senate District 62 DFL.
Amy Klobuchar is getting clobbered by “Uncommitted” as the only candidate in the race for Governor.
Woah. pic.twitter.com/2Wz2gwLnBU
— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) February 4, 2026
The governor’s race has attracted two good candidates on the Republican side, but when Walz stood down Republicans were hardest hit. With the local reaction to Operation Metro Surge, the DFL has the wind at its back with something like gale force. One can only imagine what Democrats here will do when they control all three branches of government again. It won’t be pretty.
I don’t think Klobuchar has ever taken a stand on a controversial position in her overlong Senate career. She hasn’t served in an executive capacity since she was Hennepin County Attorney and has wrongly betrayed her own prosecution of the most significant case she handled (Myon Burrell for the murder of Tyesha Edwards). See Mike Furnstahl’s 2021 report on the case along with Liz Collin’s related Alpha News story.
Senator Klobuchar has attached her name to many bills that don’t amount to much, such as (my personal favorite) her proposed 2015 bill to resolve the crisis of the detergent pod. It represents the reductio ad absurdum of the vacuity to which Klobuchar has reduced herself in the service of self-promotion.
A while back Klobuchar was acclaimed for her success in getting bills passed. Klobuchar was found to have sponsored or co-sponsored 27 bills that had been enacted into law in the session. Klobuchar touted her accomplishment in a December 2016 press release. The Star Tribune dutifully followed up in a story by Allison Sherry.
Klobuchar earned recognition with 27 bills that she sponsored or co-sponsored. They were set forth here. Five of the 27 bills concerned naming or renaming federal facilities. The late 18-term Eighth District Congressman Jim Oberstar loomed large in Klobuchar’s accomplishment, such as it was. Most of the rest of the bills carrying Klobuchar’s name amounted to little more than nothing. Even so, Klobuchar’s bill to resolve the crisis of the detergent pod didn’t make it. (She claimed credit for action taken by Procter & Gamble on its own.)
Klobuchar wears a Minnesota Nice face in public but is famously something else in private. If she finds out who was responsible for the votes in favor of Uncommitted in Senate Distrcit 62 and elsewhere, there will be hell to pay. Indeed, when the time comes, Hell To Pay might be a better title for her third memoir than The Senator Next Door (her first, 2016) or The Joy of Politics (her second, 2025).
