that you could get something done and i took on the companies who were tried to slow down, i brought six pregnant women to the conference committee because they were trying to have it take place later knowing that they were against it and the outnumbered the lobbyists two to one. to run for office. >> your daughter is how old now? >> our daughter is 18. >> how is she doing? what she is doing great. she has a really rough first few years and she was fed for a stomach tube through the first year and got better and better and it is -- she was an incredible girl and did well in school. we're pretty proud of her. >> you became county attorney and one of the things you worked on was to make sure that drunk driving was a felony. my question is, why was that even an issue? >> minnesota was one of the few states that it was not a felony.

some of it was in the spirit of our states and some of it was a fluke but we did not have a strong drunk driving law. there was a notorious story of one of our legislators taking to the house floor when they were and said ifss .08, mypass this, how will constituents get home in the morning? i had a best case to use when i testified. the guy had been arrested 16 my constituents get home in the morning? i had or 18 times for drunk driving and when the cops stopped him in minnesota for this one, they said why did you move here and he said colorado has been a felony, i would have been in jail. we were able to use that case and i worked with republican and democratic legislators it took two years and we passed that bill that made it clear that if you had more than three ew eyes that it would be a

felony. >> where did you grow up? plymouth.t was in family. nice we went on our family trips to tetons.k hills and the i never went anywhere that did not involve a tent or a camper. i went to public high schools my entire life. my mom taught second grade until she was 70. quick she recently passed away. >> she did. one of the things i loved about going and public service is my mom and dad in their own ways performed public service. tetons. i never went anywhere that did not involve a tent or a camper. my dad took on public causes -- people's causes and my mom was a teacher. i was reminded of that when there was a visitation when she died and people i did not know came. there was one family who is disabled and they recalled how unit was aboutte

butterflies and she would dress up as a monarch butterfly and she would carry a sign that said "to mexico or bust" because that is where butterflies fly. she would go grocery shopping. what she never told me until i found this out from the family to thisshe went particular store because this gradeat she had in second was now 22 years old and he worked bagging groceries at that store. he loved that monarch butterfly in it because she would go to that store and give him this big hug when she went through the line grade was now 22 years old and he worked bagging groceries at that store. with her groceries. that family and that kid came to her visitation to tell me that story so it is an example of what teachers do all the time and how she loved her job and what she did. >> you have been candid about your dad's alcoholism. what was that like growing up and what did you learn from all of that? struggle witha this. he grew up with a hardscrabble life at the iron range in

minnesota. there was a lot of drinking in the culture up there. man, aerthen he was a newspaper lot of drinking in that culture. at some point he started drinking too much and it was when i was young. i would remember we would be waiting for him on christmas morning. my sister sitting over the couch looking out the window for hours and he would finally get there and it was things like that that made it hard, and i remember fight to my taking the keys away from them when i was older when we would drive up north to see my grandma. dwi'sime he got three and he did not mean much then. my husband and i got married in 1993. and ithis third dwi really meant something. he got good treatment. he had some actual time hanging over his head. he changed his life around and he is happy, married for the third time, and doing quite well

at age 85. >> he has described you this way. there is a lot of joy in his daughter and she is -- has a knife or the absurdities of life. does that describe you? >> i think to survive in washington you have to have some eye for the absurdities of life. what he meant by that was it is important to be able to take your work seriously and not necessarily take yourself seriously. you have to be able to stand back a little and realize this is just life and people will do some crazy things but you try to find the common ground and get things done. certainly he and i on our travels, bicycling all around the world, we bicycled in russia, through red square and forcled in slovenia looking our relatives. he felt that he had found his relatives when the man said -- someone with

his mother's name in the town. and they minstrels were always drinking and play the guitar and the man would get drunk and play the guitar and he would offer to sell his house late in the night when he -- for a dollar and someone took him up on it and he went to america. having those experiences with my dad who has this amazing way of saying the humorous things and writing about it and also seeing the joy and -- in ordinary lives and the extraordinary stories of ordinary people really taught me a lot growing up. >> he has been described as a legendary sports columnist. >> he started out in sports and did that when i was growing up. at some point at 1965 he got a , anything heumn wanted to write about. he would write about politics,

consumer stories, always pushing and helping someone who had called in. he did crazy things, he went for the abominable snowman, the paper said him there in california. they said him to sweden because minnesota is a scandinavian. when they changed sides of the road that they were driving on in the entire country, his story was supposed to be all the problems and the swedes had deputized a neighbor for every street corner. there was not one problem except for a norwegian truck driver on the wrong side. he literally went from this worked 1000where he feet underground in the summers, going to everyone interview everyone from mike did the -- ronald reagan. >> how did you meet your husband? >> we met at a pool hall to some friends. then we went to see "wayne's wo

rld" with someone else, that was our first day. he grew up close to me, an hour and a half away. he grew up in a trailer home until he was in sixth grade. he has five brothers. his mom really wanted girls and got pregnant again and had identical twin boys. they had six kids in a trailer home. they eventually move to a small house and they are an incredible family. his parents are a lot of fun. we do a lot of things with their family as well. he is a lawyer and cares a lot about the world around him and teaches law school. he has been great. i do not think we could have done this and had me have this in af he had not shared lot of the work load and done things together and been incredibly supportive. >> her daughter abigail, how would you describe her? >> she is humorous, she just sent me an e-mail yesterday

telling me that she had found out that this book of that she had never cared about that i wrote when i was in college about the politics behind the building of the dome stadium in minnesota, i never have been able to get her to read it. she found out they were using it at brown university still. i get $.68 on book. she sent me an e-mail saying they were using it at ground and i said how did you find out and she said she found out from some david something. i got the typical freshman e-mail back. he was my middle school prom date, duh. she has always attempted to keep me real. i was going to take her to target to buy a swimsuit for a pool party for eighth grade. had a vote in the senate so

my husband had to take her. she called me and i picked up the cell phone as i am walking into the senate and she is in tears and said, they said we cannot wear a bikini at the pool party but you can wear tankinis. dad does not understand the difference between a bikini and a tankini. on the phoneim right now and i walked into lindsey graham and i almost knocked him over. i am not doing this balance right now. if you are trying to balance the family in the work, you never do it perfectly and anyone who says they do is wrong. for me, having my husband there has been a great blessing and a help. >> i want to come back to that. biography, that lists the essay that you referred to. what is it about? >> on the dome stadium? ncovering the"u

based it on a same analysis of how you look at things first on the macro level and that would be the world of pro sports and pro sports teams and the second part is how you get a bill done with the various special interest groups and everyone is fighting with each other and the weird alliances that take place in the case of the stadium to get it done. the third was implementation. i talked to all the people on the stadium commission who were charged with deciding where i would be located at the time, whether in minneapolis or lymington, minnesota, and they chose minneapolis and it was about how the stadium way back in the early 1980's... on time and under budget. let's forget about the fact that it collapsed a few times.

i was saying with the demise of the stadium when it was deflated for the last time, this time a planned deflation that we would stop hearing the jokes about how you should not wear a pointed hat in the top row and various other things. it has been a great stadium for our state. it is where we won two world series and some incredibly precious moments for minnesota sports. >> the story goes you come to washington and you are in the u.s. senate and you walk into the men's room during the first week. >> that is a correct story. now it is all of our 20 women. we have had a traffic jam in the women's bathroom. here i was brand-new and i did not know my way around. i had not had much connection here at all. i had been a prosecutor elected three years and i did not know my way around and i did walk right in to the men's bathroom and i believe john kerry was coming out at the same time. [inaudible]d not

in the bathroom. we had the official lunch in the lbj room and there we are with the major portrait of lyndon johnson looming above us and i went and got a salad and a cup of soup and i am ready to dive in and patty murray is at my table, 10 senators and she gets up and runs are on the table and grabs my arm and says you just took the entire bowl of thousand island dressing and you are about to eat it. i looked at her and said that is what we do in minnesota, we the thousand island dressing. it was an example of the women coming to each other's rescue. it was a hard adjustment for me and for my family. in our saturn with the shower curtain from college. i got to make some very good friends here. i love my work and being on the commerce committee, i did a lot of consumer work which felt somewhat like the prosecutor work i had done before, not just i got to manage an office of 400

people which was very fulfilling. i had worked on legislation in that area. i did that and i did agriculture which i was interested in. and later joined the judiciary committee. >> why did you decide to run for the senate in 2006? >> we had an open seat, mark dayton had decided at the last minute not to run, he is now our governor. i had loved my job as a prosecutor. i had made some good changes with the office and gotten positive results. i had seen what you can do where you can make a difference in government by holding people accountable in this case, putting out goals, publishing what happened when you got the goals done. i wanted to take that kind of philosophy in a system where i know people still believe everything has been broken. my optimistic belief that you can still get things done. that drove me from a professional standpoint. and then from a substantive

standpoint, it was all about standing up for people and doing things for the good of the state and the good of the country. little did i know when i got to the senate that a year later, that bridge would collapse in the middle of the summer day. -- anlly any line highway eight lane highway. bridges should not fall down in the middle of america. we decided we would rebuild that bridge. we work together and we were able to get that money in a record amount of time and it was rebuilt in a year. tragically, a dozen people lost their lives and many more were injured. it was a reminder of what your job is when you represent an area or the little girl who died in the swing pool -- swimming drain thatat on a dismembered.s

in democracy and believe that a freshman senator was going to be able to get a bill done that was sitting around congress for five years and at that moment when we were able to attach it to the energy bill and make pool safer -- going forward and there have been much less depth from this kind of bad and faulty equipment. when i got to call him from the cloak room and tell him we passed that bill was probably still the proudest moment i had. >> congress and its approval ratings are pretty low. as you know. someone said it is broken. how do you view the senate, how do you view congress, and can you have working relationships across the aisle? >> i hold hubert humphrey's se at. theyed for his desk and

mistakenly gave me gordon hump hrey's desk. i had the desk for two years. i told jeanne shaheen the story. lid, and i dide not know they had corrected the error. i have hubert humphrey's desk. optimistic and believe you could get things done and believed in the idea of emma chrissie and that is what guides me. i have found the best of my colleagues. i headed up the national prayer breakfast at one point. i am president of that group. half the senate comes once a year and tells their wife -- their life story. tried to find that common ground whether it is passing a

bill with senator blunt or inhofe. in health -- whether it is introducing a bill on immigration in terms of bringing in some of our high skilled workers which i did with senator hatch. the two of us were voted the two senators waste likely to get into a scandal by "the washingtonian" magazine. find common ground and an understanding of the issue and go from there. it has helped me get things done for my state but to feel good about the work we do every day and he gives you some hope which we have now seen, i would argue, in fits and starts, borne out in the last year, whether it is that incredible moment when the senate passed that bipartisan rubioion bill with marco

and john mccain working with senator mccain and senator andin and senator menendez senator hatch and i contributed to that bill or whether it was battery -- patty murray and barbara mikulski to get that budget done or the work on the farm bill that senator stevan abinow has done recently. still find it within themselves, this courage to stand next to someone they do not always agree with for the anderment of this country, that is what keeps me inspired and keeps me going. >> there is a picture of senator humphrey and muriel humphrey who had this seat. she served for about a year. did you meet them? >> yes, when i was very young. hubert humphrey. i was able to meet him and i met muriel later. family and their son skip

and others i have gotten to know. one thing apple did not realize about hubert humphrey -- people did not realize about hubert humphrey. i was -- there is a movie out on him, we chose how much he did -- he did work across the aisle. he transcended party lines and in that way he is a big role model for me. >> do you enjoy being in the senate? >> i do. i really do. i think that it is a place that needs improvement. i think some of the new rule changes, while they are tough to deal with, are the right thing to do. we should not be wasting our one on hours of debate not an amendment but a person and we should have up or down votes more often and we should move things along and that would make people feel a lot better about themselves and the institution, and certainly we would be serving democracy better. when the president talked in the

state of the union about the soldier and how it is not easy, the soldier was in a coma after sustaining a roadside bomb attack and getting to the point where he could be sitting there next to the first lady at the state of the union was a message to everyone. america has never been easy. our democracy has never been easy. there was a message to congress at we just have to keep shouldering on. 2014, why is equal pay for equal work and issue? >> i think we still have situations when you look back in the past when women just are not treated the same way. look at lilly ledbetter. she was told, you do not get a raise because you did not find out what people are making. this idea that women should be paid the same for work that a man does was something i think most republicans stood up for

when the president talked about men"iving in a "mad discriminatory situation. that was one of the most surprising moments in that state of the union speech this year. i think just the crowd in that isen -- of the senate changing things. it is the jobs that we have. we have need major chairs from the budget committee to appropriations to intelligence. to transportation. chaired byttees women. i am the senate chair on the joint economic committee. you get to hold hearings on whether or not it is income inequality or the immigration bill or women in manufacturing. it changes things and because of it, i get to go to the chairman's lunch and i get to see firsthand the numbers when you look at who is in charge of those committees is higher than the percentage of women in the senate overall because the women have tended to get reelected and

stay in the senate so they chair committees. i think that is what is the best thing for changing the way things work around here. susan collins led that effort to end the shutdown and we had a group of 12, 14 of us, have for women. he basically said here is how we think we should end this and we went to our leaders and we will do a press conference. you can work it out if you want to but this is what we are going theo and i do not think -- point is half the people were women. >> how do you describe your ideology? >> i would say i am someone who stands up for the people in my state. i am someone that believes you need more stability in washington. if i had to pick one word it is optimistic for the future and optimistic for what we can get done. >> this comes in the category, what is next? have said that--

you would be perfect for the u.s. supreme court. >> i love the job that i do now. that was a surprising question. i love the job that i do now. minnesota -- our voters like to see change. we that means a lot to me for our state. i have a lot of workers so want to do here here >> what about the presidency? >> i love the job are i have now. hillary clinton may be running on our side and that is exciting. >> when the new york times says that you are among a dozen or so people that potentially would be president someday, what is your reaction? >> that is an honor to have people think of you in that way. i think one of the things i've learned is yet to keep your eye on what you are doing and enjoy what you are doing and be humble about it. runningirst considered

for office in minnesota, a lot of people told me i should run for secretary of state which is a very important job especially for the womenn are strong and the men are good-looking and the recounts are above average. that. urge me to run for they said, you run statewide in won't have as much controversy. said, no, i think i want to do the job that i want to do for now that i see as challenging and that is what i did. i did that job. manage 400 people for eight years and another opportunity came up. i think it is important what you do your job, you like what you're doing and you keep focusing on it. if other opportunities come up, great. people spend their entire time looking for the next step, they find out that