As I detailed at the start of Chapter 2, when Amy Klobuchar arrived in the Senate, she began representing her constituents: casting roll-call votes, working on agricultural policy, and advocating for Minnesota farmers. She also began presenting her work to constituents. The same day she was sworn into office, she issued a press release declaring that her priorities included “ethics reform to restrict the influence of powerful special interests in Congress, … a change of course in Iraq, [and] greater support for homegrown renewable energy including ethanol biomass fuels” (Klobuchar 2007a). A few days later she announced her work with Senate leadership to “pass real ethics reform” (Klobuchar 2007d), and she explained that she “participated … in her first hearing as a member” of the Agriculture Committee (Klobuchar 2007c) and assessed President Bush's planned troop surge in Iraq as taking “his failed Iraq policy in the wrong direction” (Klobuchar 2007e).

Klobuchar's publicity effort was hardly unique among the new senators. For example, Tennessee's Repulican freshman senator Bob Corker told constituents that he worked with Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Kay Bailey Hutchsion (R-TX) “introducing a bill to make the state sales tax deduction permanent” (Corker 2007), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told constituents that he “asked Portugese Prime Minister Jose Socrates to reconsider the potential closing of Portugal's consulate in Providence” (Whitehouse 2007), and Jon Tester (D-MT) “praised a decision allowing the U.S. post office in Kinsey, Montana, to remain open indefinitely” (Tester 2007a).