Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said she was surprised by a “number of things” in the midterm elections, including how well Democrats fared.
Democrats did better than expected and appeared to have staved off a “red wave,” although control of the House and several Senate races were still up in the air Wednesday morning.
“We have literally defied the tides of history,” Klobuchar said of the House election. “No matter what happens, we know it’s going to be incredibly close in the House.”
She said many Republicans were “out there predicting this red tide,” but “those predictions did not age well,” adding that a number of governor races across the country were won by Democrats.
The senator said, however, that she had her concerns going into Tuesday’s elections.
“Everyone was concerned because of all the money that had been spent against our candidates, the angry, angry types of ads that we saw on TV,” she said.
She urged for campaign finance reform to prevent “the angry, ugly ads coming from untold sources of money that no one can figure out, shadow contributions.”
“That’s got to end,” she said. “It’s really bad for our democracy.”
She also said voters were “amazing” for showing up in big numbers.
“The voters understood that democracy was on the ballot,” and prioritized issues including reproductive rights and inflation, she said.
“I think the people of this country understood more than the pollsters or the pundits thought that Democrats have been doing a whole lot to help, and that in fact, the Republicans didn’t really have a plan and they were playing politics with it, with the problem that’s a worldwide inflation problem,” she said.
Klobuchar said she thinks Democrats can gain more voter trust on issues like crime and the economy by “putting forward plans to go after crime.”
“That includes funding the police,” she said. “…I think that’s going to be really important going forward, that we continue to make that clear and that we actually hope to solve this problem. There’s many solutions including mental health, including recruiting police officers, fentanyl, many things that we have to deal with.”
The senator said she is also continuing work on inflation.
“To me that means continuing this work on workforce training, on the supply chain disruptions, on bringing the shipping costs down, on doing more when it comes to pharmaceutical costs and housing and childcare,” she said.
