Klobuchar to Biden: Pick VP of color
Minn. senator urges Biden to select a woman of color
The Minnesota senator took her name out of contention as a running mate.
Amy Klobuchar says she is dropping out of the running to be vice president and urging Democrat Joe Biden to select a woman of color instead.
The white Minnesota senator, who had seen her prospects fall as racial tensions swept the nation, said Thursday that she called the presumptive presidential nominee Wednesday night and made the suggestion. Biden had already committed to choosing a woman as his running mate.
“I think this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket,” Klobuchar said on MSNBC. “If you want to heal this nation right now — my party, yes, but our nation — this is sure a hell of a way to do it.”
Biden praised Klobuchar in a tweet Thursday, citing her “grit and determination” and saying, “With your help, we’re going to beat Donald Trump.”
Klobuchar’s chances at getting the VP nod diminished after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis. Klobuchar was a prosecutor years ago in the county that includes Minneapolis, and during that period, more than two dozen people — mostly minorities — died during encounters with police. Floyd’s death last month set off days of protests across the country and criticism that as the county’s top prosecutor, Klobuchar didn’t charge any of the officers involved in citizen deaths.
Officer Derek Chauvin, who was charged with Floyd’s murder, was involved in a fatal October 2006 shooting of a man accused of stabbing people and aiming a shotgun at police. Klobuchar’s successor as prosecutor, Mike Freeman, sent Chauvin’s case to a grand jury, which was customary practice for the office at the time, and the grand jury in 2008 declined to prosecute. Freeman has said Klobuchar, who won election to the Senate in November 2006 and took office in January 2007, had no involvement in the Chauvin case.
Klobuchar, 60, was among a large field of Democrats who had sought the 2020 presidential nomination, running as a pragmatic Midwesterner who has passed over 100 bills. She dropped out and threw her support behind Biden before the crucial March 3 “Super Tuesday” contests after struggling to win support from black voters, who are crucial to Democratic victories. Her best finish of the primary was in overwhelmingly white New Hampshire, where she came in third.
The third-term senator had to cancel one of the final rallies of her campaign after Black Lives Matter and other activists took the stage in Minnesota to protest her handling of a murder case when she was prosecutor that sent a black teen to prison for life.
Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, a close Biden ally and Congress’ highest-ranking black lawmaker, said in the days after Floyd’s death that he believed it made Klobuchar a less likely pick for vice president, though he said she is “absolutely” qualified for the job.
Even before Floyd’s death, activists were pushing Biden to consider a woman of color, saying it would help build a multiracial coalition.