Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) made her first campaign stop Saturday morning in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a state 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton skipped visiting.
Klobuchar spoke to a crowd of about 300 supporters at SHIFT Cyclery and Coffee Bar where she repeated several themes from her announcement address, but also promised to bridge the rural-urban divide.
“That was one of the points I wanted to make by coming to Eau Claire. Eau Claire is a place of a great university and education. It is also in the middle of a rural area,” she said, calling herself the “Senator next door.”
Packed house ahead of @amyklobuchar’s first campaign stop at an Eau Claire bicycle and coffee shop pic.twitter.com/i9NiYm4W15
— Torey Van Oot (@toreyvanoot) February 16, 2019
“I came here because I am the ‘Senator next door’ and I will be traveling to every single state in the Midwest,” Klobuchar said, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and touted her family’s roots in Wisconsin.
“I am so pleased to be in Wisconsin, the state where my mother was born,” she said. “And my mother’s parents, actually, both came here from Switzerland. My grandma came here when she was three. And what do you think her parents did in Racine? Yes, they were cheese makers.”
Klobuchar also expressed support for bringing the 2020 Democratic convention to Milwaukee, calling it a “great place to have a convention.”
“I want to build on the momentum we saw here in 2018,” she continued. “No one ever thought that the Democrats were going to be able to defeat Gov. Walker. But we did. We did it in a smart Wisconsin way with a grassroots campaign with Tammy Baldwin at the top of the ticket. And we can do it again, Wisconsin.”
“There will be a lot of Wisconsin people on this campaign,” she added, and said she wants to “go to places that maybe we didn’t focus enough on in the last few years, and that includes rural areas.”
Emphasizing an electability/Midwestern appeal theme with her first post-launch event in Wisconsin, @amyklobuchar says she wants to “go to places that maybe we didn’t focus enough in the last few years, and that includes rural areas.”
— Eric Bradner (@ericbradner) February 16, 2019
After her stop in Eau Claire, Klobuchar left for Iowa where she will make three stops throughout the weekend. As The Minnesota Sun reported, Klobuchar announced her candidacy last Sunday during a rousing speech on the banks of the Mississippi River. Her full address can be read here.
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of Battleground State News and The Minnesota Sun. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Amy Klobuchar” by Lorie Shaull. CC BY-SA 2.0. Background Photo “Crowd” by Eric Bradner.
