Democrats lose Senate, but Klobuchar says common ground can be found

Minnesota voters re-elected DFL U.S. Sen. Al Franken yesterday. But he'll be going back to a very different chamber, after Republicans won enough seats nationwide to take over the Senate.

MPR's Cathy Wurzer spoke with Minnesota's DFL senior Senator Amy Klobuchar about Franken's victory and how Republicans and Democrats will work together once the switch in power takes place. The following is en edited transcript of their conversation:

Cathy Wurzer: Al Franken's margin of victory was larger than it was six years ago, obviously, but he's going back to Washington, so are you, to a different kind of U.S. Senate. So I am curious, where do you think the areas of compromise are going to be between Democrats and Republicans?

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Sen. Klobuchar: Well, I think there will be some compromise. I can tell you yesterday, as I spoke to different Senators before the election night, I talked to five or six Republicans, one is Lindsey Graham who is a friend of mine who'd been expected to win, and John Cornyn who is in their leadership, among them, and they all, I was actually quite surprised, spoke at length about the things they wanted to work on and the need to get the Senate moving.

There's been a group of us, 20 of us that have been meeting on a bipartisan basis with Chuck Schumer and Lamar Alexander about how to change the process to get amendments voted on and get moving again. So there could be a possibility of moving on tax reform. That is something that we certainly know well in Minnesota with the Medtronic inversion proposal, that there's a lot of money that is overseas that companies have that we would like to incentivize to bring back to invest. There is huge support for infrastructure investment. That tends to be a bi-partisan issue. And you know I hope we do something on immigration reform.

So there could be things -- and there's a reason they have an incentive. The presidential election is a few years off, but around the corner. And you also have a number Republicans that will be up next time. The map is reversed. Much more blue state. Republicans in Ohio up, Missouri, Wisconsin. And so they might have a reason because of that to want to be more conciliatory and work with us on some of these issues.

Wurzer: Or, do you see Democrats banding together to try to attempt to stop dismantling of some of the president's agenda?

Now, that will most certainly be a part of this as well. They have promised their base some votes on these things, like repealing the Affordable Care Act and other things, but I think between the president's veto -- and the numbers aren't there at all to override a veto. Those kinds of things probably wouldn't be successful to make those kind of major, huge changes. But I do think that there could be some modification of some of these bills, and I think even some of the Democrats with a big piece of legislation, there is always changes that can be made.

I think the biggest thing for the country is that we are stable now, and our economy, Minnesota is even better than that. But it is a moment in time that we can't waste a year not doing anything. We have to be able to compete internationally, to me, that means tax reform and international issues like immigration reform.

And then looking at some of these other things: we don't have enough workers to fill some of these job openings we have in Minnesota. And while we've done workforce training legislation, looking at high school and making it easier for kids to get those one-year, two-year degrees and creating more incentives for that would be a big deal for our state. So, I bring those issues up because I think there's room for bipartisan support.

Wurzer: Exit polls show that voters are not happy with Congress or the president, and the economy, too. What's the Democrats takeaway from these exit polls?

Klobuchar: I think... there are three things going on here. Number one, the map in the Senate races. Of course, It's not the only issue, but it did affect things. But if there were more blue or purple states that would have been up I think the numbers would have been different, but still very difficult.

Number two, the president's approval rating, which you mentioned.

The third thing which is harder to grasp here, and I would like to see some Wednesday morning quarterbacking from analysts, but candidates that tended to stress the economy in the Senate races, which Senator Franken did, and either economic progress or challenges that laid ahead, I have a feeling that they maybe fared better. And I think again, the exit polls also showed people frustrated with the gridlock, which I talked about but also I think frustrated that the economy is doing better, but maybe not quite where they wanted to be, in terms of their own lives.