{"id":18381,"date":"2026-01-29T20:01:55","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/amy-klobuchars-governor-run-sets-up-senate-leadership-shakeup\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T20:01:55","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:01:55","slug":"amy-klobuchars-governor-run-sets-up-senate-leadership-shakeup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/amy-klobuchars-governor-run-sets-up-senate-leadership-shakeup\/","title":{"rendered":"Amy Klobuchar\u2019s governor run sets up Senate leadership shakeup"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the No. 3 Democratic Party leader, made her bid for Minnesota governor<\/a> official Thursday morning, presaging a leadership shakeup in the caucus.<\/p>\n

Klobuchar was viewed as a potential contender to succeed Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin as Democratic whip after Durbin \u2014 who has held the No. 2 position for two decades \u2014 announced his retirement<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

But Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii moved quickly to lock down support to succeed Durbin, and Klobuchar never threw her name in. Even so, she was seen as a credible successor to Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is planning to run again for leader but has faced calls to step down from outside the caucus.<\/p>\n

Klobuchar\u2019s announcement comes amid a fight on Capitol Hill<\/a> about President Donald Trump\u2019s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda in her home state. The killing of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis has thrown federal funding for the Department of Homeland Security into question ahead of a Friday midnight shutdown deadline.<\/p>\n

With the funding fight in full swing and the internal leadership election not taking place until after the November elections, other Democratic leaders aren\u2019t yet jumping to declare their interest in moving up the ranks.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s talk about it after,\u201d Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, the No. 4 Democratic leader, told reporters Thursday. \u201cI am really just focused on an agency out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, another member of Senate leadership and the top Democrat on the Homeland Security funding panel, said he isn\u2019t focused on how leadership ranks will shift.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got other big things we\u2019re doing today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the No. 3 Democratic Party leader, made her bid for Minnesota governor official Thursday morning, presaging a leadership shakeup in the caucus. Klobuchar was viewed as a potential contender to succeed Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin as Democratic whip after Durbin \u2014 who has held the No. 2 position for two decades \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}