ShareThisAfter a three-judge panel declared Al Franken the top vote-getter in the Minnesota Senate recount -- propelling Norm Coleman's appeal to the state Supreme Court -- a leading TV pundit turned to the other senator from Minnesota with a question.
"Can we seat a senator so Amy (Klobuchar) doesn't have to do the job of two senators?" asked MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.
While Franken and Coleman are still dueling, Klobuchar appears to be enjoying a halo effect of being the state's only senator, working overtime and above the political fray.
The "lone senator from Minnesota" might be considered the default winner of the state's endless Senate race.
After inheriting 400 constituent cases from Republican Coleman, whose office closed in early February, the first-term Democrat says she has seen a doubling of requests from ordinary Minnesotans on everything from veterans' benefits to overseas adoptions and lost Social Security checks. Meetings with lobbyists and advocacy groups are up 30 percent.
As the state's only senator, her office gets six times as many calls from people registering their opinions on legislation, seeking help, lodging complaints or just offering advice. Recently, a new telephone system was installed in her Washington office to route calls past the front desk, which was getting inundated.
"Starting with her and working down the line, they're all working double-time," said Minnesota lobbyist Dennis McGrann. "They're literally maxed out."
But while Klobuchar's staff carries on in the throes of legislative overload, the continuing legal standoff has also focused enormous media exposure on Klobuchar the politician, raising her profile nationally and cementing her popularity in Minnesota.
"It consistently reinforces the idea that she is a hardworking legislator involved in the key debates, doing double duty for Minnesota," said Kathryn Pearson, who teaches political science at the University of Minnesota. "There is no doubt that, politically, this is all making her look good."
Her weekly "Minnesota Morning" breakfasts in Washington have seen a steady rise in attendance, with more than 75 constituents packing into her office to nibble on walnut-raisin Potica, a Slovenian pastry flown in from Virginia, Minn.
Her introduction, "As you know, I'm your only senator right now ...," was greeted with spontaneous applause.
"This is a potentially delicate situation, caught between the demands of her party and the demands of the state," said former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber, now a leading national Republican strategist. "I don't think everyone would have handled it so well."
After saying in January that the Senate should seat Franken as the provisional winner of the recount, Klobuchar largely demurred from the fight, arguing only that Minnesotans -- and not Washington politicians -- should determine the outcome of the race, which Franken now leads by 312 votes.
"I've said what I thought," Klobuchar said. "That is that Norm has the right to his appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court, but that Minnesota has a right to two senators."
The political side of Franken's case has been championed in Washington by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other party leaders. That has allowed Klobuchar to adopt a lower profile on the recount.
"She's obviously a Franken partisan," Weber said. "But she has not appeared to be unfair or vitriolic."
Klobuchar has approval ratings hovering around 60 percent in Minnesota. "There's a halo effect to Amy Klobuchar that goes back before the recount," said Augsburg University political scientist John Shockley. "She just comes across with an air of authenticity."
Like some other analysts, Shockley views Klobuchar's workmanlike response to the long Senate vacancy as an extension of her long reliance on bread-and-butter issues such as crime-fighting and toy safety, concerns that bridge the partisan divide. Also serving as counterpoint to the partisan Senate race is Klobuchar's populist image as an ex-Hennepin County prosecutor and proud daughter of Minnesota's blue-collar Iron Range.
The only modern precedent for Klobuchar's situation, the 1975 Senate recount in New Hampshire, left that state with only one seated senator for 217 days. But at the time, New Hampshire had a constituent base of only 850,000 residents, about one-sixth Minnesota's current population.
The predicament has not come without its pressures. A battle over Medicare funding in the recent economic stimulus package nearly cost Minnesota $300 million in government spending. Klobuchar's side prevailed by only two votes.
"That was my lowest moment," she said. "I thought, 'If we lose by one vote, this will be my fault.' It was a close call. It was tangible money."
(E-mail Kevin Diaz at kdiaz(at)startribune.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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