Amy Seizes Campaign ​“Klomentum”

Manchester, N.H.— Amy Klobuchar is having a moment, just in time for the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. A diner discussion with 6‑year-old Joanna Vachon and an SRO college rally showed how she is making connections with voters still looking for a candidate to support on Tuesday.

Klobuchar is a U.S. senator from Minnesota (and 1982 Yale College graduate) and one of nearly a dozen Democratic presidential candidates vying to win, or at least finish near the top of the pack, during this Tuesday’s primary in the Granite State.

She has tried to position herself as a practical, moderate, decent and resilient alternative to the Medicare-for-All ​“revolutionary” and universal-free-college theme of Bernie Sanders’ progressive campaign as well as to President Donald Trump’s Twitter-fueled controversies, right-wing judicial picks, and efforts to end Obamacare; as a Midwestern with bipartisan credentials who can lure Trump voters back to the Democratic ticket.

In the past week she has caught a wave of ​“Klomentum” after a widely praised Friday night debate performance that netted her a $2 million bump in campaign contributions and the precipitous decline of the leading moderate in the nomination race, Joe Biden.

Her campaign still faces an uphill battle Tuesday, with Sanders and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg surging in the polls. The New Hampshire primary Tuesday will determine whether Klobuchar’s popularity with insiders and with newspaper editorial boards (from The New York Times, sort of, to the Manchester Union Leader) can translate into actual votes and whether she can break into the top tier of candidates.

The new energy was visible Sunday as Klobuchar criss-crossed central New Hampshire, talking about her working class roots at a greasy spoon Manchester diner called Chez Vachon in the morning and exhorting both the ​“courage” of Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney as well as the progressive labor politics of former Minn. U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone during a college campus campaign rally that brought out hundreds of supporters.

Klobuchar sought to capitalize on this political moment her campaign is having, to make her pitch directly to voters who for now at least seem eager to listen and open to casting their ballots her way.

“I stand before you today as the granddaughter of an iron ore miner,” she said to cheers at the Southern New Hampshire University rally. ​“As the daughter of a teacher and a newspaperman. As the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from the State of Minnesota. And as a candidate for president of the United States!”

“I Want It To Be A Girl”

One of Klobuchar’s first stops of the day was at the Chez Vachon diner on the west side of Manchester, the Granite State’s largest city.

The diner is one of the city’s many well-trod weekend morning hotspots for presidential candidate visits in the run-up to the First in the Nation primary.

On a back room wall hung an American flag surrounded by campaign bumper stickers, t‑shirts and pins for past presidential hopefuls ranging from John McCain to Vermin Supreme.

One server recalled an Andrew Yang campaign staffer leaving one of her colleagues a $1,000 tip last week alongside a note proclaiming the value of the Democratic candidate’s oft-trumpeted universal basic income, or ​“freedom dividend.”

A rush of TV news cameras filled the already crowded diner just before Klobuchar arrived. The Minnesota senator made a beeline for a window-side table seating a family of four from the nearby suburb of Bedford.

The cameras tilted down as Klobuchar casually chatted with both the parents, Diana and Jeff Vachon (no relation to the diner’s owners), as well as their 6‑year-old daughter Joanna and 3‑year-old son Ryan about not just the primary, but also primary school education.

“Are you in school?” Klobuchar asked Joanna. ​“What grade?”

“Kindergarten,” Joanna replied.

“That’s pretty cool,” said the senator. ​“And who’s your teacher?”

“Ms. Webster.”

“So, my mom used to be a kindergarten teacher,” Klobuchar continued. ​“And then she was a second grade teacher. She really loved that. She was a really good teacher. We would always have all the books from kindergarten in our house. What’s your favorite book?”

“I don’t know,” Joanna said shyly.

What about Chicka Chicka Boom Boom? her mom asked. Joanna nodded.

With the parents’ permission, Joanna and Ryan climbed onto Klobuchar’s lap for a photo op.

“I think it’s cool for her to meet a female candidate,” Diana said about her daughter getting to talk in person with Klobuchar. ​“I would love for her to see a female president.”

“I want it to be a girl,” Joanna piped in about the presidential contest.

Diana said she still has not made up her mind as to whom she’ll be voting for on Tuesday.

She said the Sunday morning diner visit boosted Klobuchar’s prospects in her mind. Diana said her mom is also a kindergarten teacher, and she appreciates Klobuchar having that first-hand experience with early childhood education in her personal history.

Manchester residents and married couple Marcel Jackson and Mary-Fran Rich (pictured) also got to meet Klobuchar at the west side diner — and said they too are open to voting for the Minnesota moderate.

Jackson said he’s read through some of Klobuchar’s first 100 day plans, and said he’s impressed with how thorough and practical they are — even if he would prefer a more progressive candidate like Bernie Sanders succeed in pushing through Medicare for All.

Rich said she’s more conservative than her husband, and likes that Klobuchar has promoted a nonprofit public option rather than a full single-payer government-run plan and stood against discontinuing all private health insurance.

“I want to have the option to have my own insurance,” she said.

Before Klobuchar left the diner, she sat down at another table alongside a few more prospective voters and ordered a plate of poutine — a French Canadian comfort food consisting of french fries, cheese curds, and gravy.

As she dug in, she asked the wait staff if other candidates come in, order poutine, and then don’t touch the stuff. She said that won’t be a problem with her.

“This is the only thing I’ve eaten all day,” she said with a smile.

A Full House

Klobuchar found another receptive — and significantly larger — audience several miles north of Chez Vachon during a roughly 500-person rally at Southern New Hampshire University.

Green ​“Amy” lawn signs poked up from frosty lawns across campus, leading to the auditorium where the senator held her afternoon rally. Campaign staff apologetically convinced 50 of the seated attendees to give up their chairs so that the capacity room could allow for a few more interested onlookers without creating an overcrowded fire hazard.

The group sang along to Pure Prairie League’s ​“Amie” as they waited for their suddenly ascendant candidate.

“She’s got the grit to go against Trump,” said Erling Jorgensen (pictured, next to his wife Karen).

“And she’s got the experience too,” Karen added.

“She’s passed many bills. She’s grounded. She’s authentic.”

Local pediatric nurse practitioner Susan Mckeown said she was drawn to Klobuchar’s campaign because of the candidate’s health-care policies — not around Medicare for All or single-payer insurance, but rather around dedicating more federal funds and creating more thoughtful approaches towards preventing opioid addiction, providing treatment to those who struggle with addiction, and eradicating the stigma associated with addiction.

“Stigma, I’d like to see it erased in my lifetime. I tell you,” Mckeown said. ​“We have to talk about it openly without shame and embarrassment.”

Klobuchar did just that soon after she ascended the small stage and took the mic. She dove into her father’s life-long struggle with alcoholism and about the challenges her family faced in finding him stable, affordable treatment and long-term care.

At nearly every turn of her speech, Klobuchar sought to ground her campaign’s policy proposals in personal experience.

Her support for union rights and for affordable higher education came with a story about her grandfather, an iron ore miner ​“who worked 1,500 feet underground” and stashed money in a coffee can until he and his wife had enough to send their son, Klobuchar’s father, to a two-year community college.

She spoke of sitting in the Senate during the recently concluded impeachment trial of Donald Trump and marveling at the ​“profiles in courage” of Romney, the only Republican who voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment on the abuse of power count, as well Doug Jones, an Alabama Democrat who also jeopardized his largely Trump-supporting constituents by supporting impeachment.

“You know all of our worlds are kind of upside down when we have our crowd here at a Democratic rally, cheering for the former Republican nominee for president. But I think it tells it all right there.”

She said those impeachment votes by Romney and Jones reminded her of what she is trying to position as the core message of her campaign: that Democrats should nominate and Americans will elect a candidate who seeks to bridge the wide and acrimonious divides between Democrats and Republicans.

“Courage is whether or not you’re willing to stand next to someone you don’t always agree with for the betterment of this country,” she said. ​“That is what leadership is. Leadership is making those tough decisions whether they are popular or unpopular.”

Click on the videos below to watch parts of Klobuchar’s campaign day on Sunday.