What is Amy Klobuchar's Net Worth?
Amy Klobuchar is an American lawyer and politician who has a net worth of $1.5 million. Amy Klobuchar serves as the senior US senator from Minnesota. Prior to her election to the Senate in 2006, she served as the county attorney for Hennepin County, the most populous county in Minnesota. Klobuchar ran for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential election, but ended up dropping out and endorsing Joe Biden.
Though she is a technically a millionaire, Amy has consistently been ranked as one of the 30 poorest US Senators. According to her most recent government financial disclosure, Amy's biggest asset is a Vanguard investment account that is worth $250,000. She owns a similar Fidelity account that's worth $175,000. Going back to 2006, her net worth has ranged from a low of $465,000 in 2009 to its current high of $1.5 million. She and her husband earned a combined total of $299,000 in 2018. That is roughly how much they have earned together every year going back to 2006.
Early Life and Education
Amy Klobuchar was born on May 25, 1960 in Plymouth, Minnesota to schoolteacher Rose and journalist and author Jim. She is of Slovene and Swiss descent. When she was 15, her parents divorced. Klobuchar went to Wayzata High School as a teenager, graduating as the valedictorian. She subsequently attended Yale University, from which she graduated magna cum laude with a BA in political science in 1982. Following this, Klobuchar attended the University of Chicago Law School, where she was an associate editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. She graduated from the school magna cum laude with her JD in 1985.
Career Beginnings
Following her graduation from law school, Klobuchar became a corporate attorney; she was a partner at the law firms Gray Plant Mooty and Dorsey & Whitney. In 1994, she made her first run for public office as the county attorney for Minnesota's Hennepin County. Ultimately, Klobuchar dropped out of the race and endorsed the incumbent Michael Freeman. She ran again four years later, this time winning the election to become the new Hennepin County attorney. Klobuchar was reelected in 2002 without opposition.
US Senator
When US senator from Minnesota Mark Dayton announced that he would not pursue reelection in 2005, Klobuchar became a favorite for the nomination, earning the support of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. In the subsequent general election, she beat Republican candidate Mark Kennedy to become senator. This made Klobuchar the first woman ever to be elected as a senator from Minnesota. She went on to win reelection in 2012, beating Republican Kurt Bills. Klobuchar won reelection again in 2018, defeating Republican Jim Newberger.
Klobuchar has been very popular during her tenure in the Senate, as well as prolific. At the conclusion of the 114th Congress in 2016, she had passed more legislation than any other senator. In early 2017, Klobuchar called for a bipartisan independent commission to investigate relations between the Trump administration and Russia. Klobuchar was present at the US Capitol during the rightwing insurrection on January 6, 2021; she subsequently endorsed the use of the 25th Amendment to immediately remove Trump from office.
2020 Presidential Race
In February of 2019, Klobuchar launched her campaign for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential election. Pitching herself as a moderate, she ran on a platform that emphasized infrastructure improvements, the introduction of a public health insurance option, and the promotion of agriculture, among other policies. Unlike her more progressive opponents, however, she rejected the Green New Deal and universal healthcare. After her poor results in the South Carolina primary in March of 2020, Klobuchar dropped out of the presidential race. She subsequently endorsed Joe Biden.
Getty
Political Views
Klobuchar holds political views that accord with modern liberalism in the US. She supports LGBTQ rights, women's rights, and the Affordable Care Act, and endorses gun control legislation. Klobuchar has also called for greater election security laws. Although she also supports many measures to combat climate change, she has shown resistance to the Green New Deal. Moreover, Klobuchar falls on the more moderate side of things when it comes to education, as she has opposed tuition-free four-year college.
Books
As an author, Klobuchar had her first published work in 1986 with "Uncovering the Dome," which she had written some years earlier as her senior thesis at Yale University. The work examines a decade of politics surrounding the construction of Minneapolis's Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Klobuchar's next published work was her 2015 autobiography "The Senator Next Door: A Memoir from the Heartland." Later, in 2021, she released "Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age," a 624-page historical survey of US antitrust laws.
Personal Life
In 1993, Klobuchar wed attorney and law professor John Bessler. The couple has a daughter named Abigail. Notably, Abigail was born with a disorder that hindered her ability to swallow. Because of the laws at the time, Klobuchar was forced to leave the hospital within 24 hours, which was problematic considering her daughter's condition. In response, Klobuchar appeared before the Minnesota State Legislature to appeal for a bill that would grant new mothers 48 hours in the hospital. The bill was passed, and eventually became federal law.
Klobuchar announced that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021. She underwent successful surgery and treatment, and was declared cancer-free in August.
