It has been an exciting month for our campaign...the strength we saw on precinct caucus night in every corner of the state was a reminder of how much you want to see change in Washington D.C. And just last week I visited a coffee shop in Alexandria and over 100 people showed up for a standing-room only organizational meeting! Why? The people in greater Minnesota have experienced first and up front the effects of the wrong-headed policies in Washington. Double-digit increases in health care costs, gas prices, and tuition have hit our middle class hard, particularly in counties with few resources to cope. And it is the brave sons and daughters and classmates and neighbors of families in small towns throughout this state who have been called up to serve in Iraq. As Tim Walz, our great congressional candidate running in southern Minnesota reminds me every day, it is the young men and women from towns like Morris and Worthington and Dassel who have been sent to war by a President that didn't have a plan on how to secure the peace and bring them home.  As I travel the state visiting district conventions in Cottonwood County, meet-ups in Plymouth, spaghetti dinners in Rochester and fish fries in International Falls, I am reminded of the fact that it is gatherings like these —where people get out of their house and into the mix—that truly bring change.

A few years ago during the presidential campaign I visited one of the district conventions in my own county—Minnetonka, a suburb that traditionally votes Republican. I walked into the school where the convention was being held, came into a room where I saw about forty guys hanging around and I thought, well, I don't recognize many of these people, but here I am, at the Democratic district convention in Minnetonka. I asked a friendly soul if he could introduce me to the chair, and he said "County Attorney Klobuchar, are you looking for the Democrats?" And I said, "Yes I am." And he said, "Well, this is actually the Golf Clinic of Minnetonka...the Democrats are around the corner." I went around the corner and found 400 cheering Democrats...we outnumbered the golf clinic in Minnetonka 10-to-1. At that moment I knew that change was coming.

And it did. This was the area where we elected Maria Ruud to the State House and just three months ago in a special election, Terri Bonoff to the State Senate. These women were elected by traditional Democrats, Independents, former and current Republicans...and yes, maybe even some members of the golf clinic of Minnetonka.

As some of Minnesota's most famous bloggers told me when I had the honor to have a beer with them in a bar in Minneapolis last week, the blogs and email communications are going to be another integral way of reaching out to people in this campaign.

One of my favorite questions was from the Republican blogger. He asked me why Republicans should vote for me. I reminded him that for years Republicans have been crying for fiscal responsibility and values. Yet it is the credit card mentality of the Republican leadership in the White House and Congress (supported wholeheartedly by my opponent Mark Kennedy) who have taken a $200 billion Clinton budget surplus and turned it into a $300 billion Bush budget deficit. Instead of paying down the national debt, they have increased it by more than $2.5 trillion during the past five years, now costing us $800 million a day in interest. I have long advocated for returning to the pay-as-you-go rules that brought us record surpluses, lifting the ban on negotiation with the drug companies, closing corporate tax loopholes, rolling back the tax cuts on the wealthiest, stopping pay raises for Congress until they balance the budget, and cutting down on discretionary spending on things like "bridges to nowhere" so that we can focus on the big bold challenges ahead of us.

Values? I hold true to the Minnesota values of hard work, fair play and responsibility. And that means not only fiscal responsibility, but also affordable universal health care (beginning with immediate progress by providing coverage to kids and opening up the federal health care plan so that people can buy into it just like members of Congress), energy independence (with a clear 20% renewable standard for electricity and fuel), and a significant change of course in Iraq by bringing home a substantial number of our troops.

But it all begins in rooms like that cafeteria in Minnetonka, the coffee shop in Alexandria, and the bar in Minneapolis...it all begins with people reaching out beyond the challenges of their everyday lives to take on something big and bold—the challenge of change. Please join us in our campaign to bring sweeping change to Washington D.C. Contribute to our campaign before the March 31st deadline, and then join our grassroots team. Volunteer with the campaign today .