Sen. Amy Klobuchar is partially responsible for Joe Biden earning the Democrat nomination for president, so it’s fitting that Biden would offer her a cabinet role in his administration — perhaps as attorney general or agriculture secretary.
Klobuchar has been coy about a role in the Biden administration.
“When the president calls, you listen,” she told WCCO Radio. “I think my position in the Senate couldn’t be more important right now. We’re going to need people that can work across the aisle and that’s one of the key things I do.”
If she accepted, one option for Gov. Tim Walz is to appoint Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan to Klobuchar’s seat.
Walz, for his part, is non-committal.
“I asked the questions of my in-house counsel, what is the process, what would happen if Senator Klobuchar is chosen? What does that look like? What’s the timing? And that’s all we pursued on it,” he said this week.
This move would mark another shift leftward for Minnesota. While Klobuchar is a standard liberal Democrat, Flanagan’s persona more resembles grievances of firebrand Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Despite being raised and still residing in a wealthy Minneapolis suburb, the lieutenant governor seemingly has disdain for the state that elected her to its second-highest position (before age 40) despite limited political experience and aberrant views.
Flanagan claims Native American ancestry, and is thus deemed “first Indigenous person” elected to executive office in Minnesota’s 162-year history.
Her role models are radical activists.
Flanagan recently told MPR she was shaped by her late father, “a fierce critic of U.S. and tribal governments” and admired “his fire to bring change in government and to stand up for her people. He was a hell-raiser in the best sense of the word. My dad often would say, “My girl, I want to burn the system down and you want to change it from the inside out. We need both.”
This year, as the state she leads succumbed to race riots, violence, a COVID-19 crisis and more, Flanagan’s been concerned with eradicating historic statuary and castigating America.
First, she lauded hooligans destroying state property:
“The arrival of Christopher Columbus to what is now the Americas set in motion centuries of violence and genocide against the Indigenous people who already lived here. As the highest-ranking Native woman elected to executive office in the country, I have often reflected on the fact that I could see a statue honoring that legacy from my office window. It was a constant reminder that our systems were not built by or for Native people or people of color, but in many cases, to exclude, erase, and eliminate us.”
Last week, Flanagan griped: “And so before I walk into that building (the capitol), I take two deep breaths: First is a breath of just acknowledging the responsibility of being lieutenant governor for Minnesota. But the second breath is a breath of protection, walking into this system that has done quite a bit of harm.”
The next few weeks will determine if Klobuchar is moving on and, if so, whether the governor will appoint a mainstream liberal or one who wallows in identity politics, despite it being soundly repudiated in this election.
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
