Senators represent state at Trump inauguration
Phones – and eyes – lit up across Steele and Rice counties last week as a pair of familiar faces appeared on national news coverage of the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States.
“We were in the second row, right in front of Trump,” said Minnesota Sen. John Jasinski, R-Faribault.
He was there as an invited guest of U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who offered him an extra ticket. Jasinski invited his good friend and Medford resident, Josh Ihlenfeld.
“It was amazing,” Jasinski said. “It was very, very neat to be at, obviously, a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I think. I’m a big Trump policy guy; I like his policies, so it was great to go.”
Klobuchar also invited Minnesota Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, Sen. Julia Coleman, R-Waconia and Sen. Karin Housley, R-Stillwater, who all attended.
“It was pretty funny,” Jasinski said of the invitation he received earlier this month. “I was sitting at breakfast with Sen. Johnson, having our weekly meeting at the Downtowner in St. Paul, when his phone rang. He said, ‘I better get this,’ then came back and said, ‘that was Sen. Klobuchar. She just invited me to the inauguration!’
“I said, ‘wow, I guess I better suck up to you, so I get a ticket, huh?’ And just as I said that, my phone rang – and it was Amy calling me,” he said. “I told her, ‘Well, I guess I don’t have to suck up to Mark anymore,’ and we just laughed.”
Despite their political differences, Jasinski has a good relationship with Klobuchar, now in her fourth term in Washington, D.C.
“I was the mayor of Faribault for eight years, and we went through a couple of floods together,” he said, “so I’ve sort of kept in touch with her.”
Chuck Ackman, who preceded Jasinski as Faribault mayor, serves as Klobuchar’s outreach director, “so we’ve got that connection through the years.”
The two senators didn’t see each other last week, though.
“She was the chairwoman of the whole event, so she was busy,” Jasinski said. “She was actually with the president-elect and the president and was riding with them. We never saw her, but we were involved with her staff.”
There was some concern the four state senators wouldn’t be seeing much of anything, once the decision was made to move the inaugural ceremony from outside the Capitol to inside its rotunda.
“We were worried we might get cut” because of the much smaller area, Jasinski said. “We didn’t know exactly where we’d be (seated) until we were leaving Minnesota … but we were going, no matter what.”
The contingency flew out on Jan. 18 and returned Jan. 21.
They did not meet President Trump, “but he was probably about eight feet away,” Jasinski said.
As chair of the bipartisan inauguration committee, Klobuchar opened the inauguration with a five-minute speech, declaring the theme of the ceremony “enduring democracy.” She was the only Democratic speaker at the inauguration.
Klobuchar also paid tribute to a famous Minnesota singer-songwriter in her speech, quoting Bob Dylan’s song “Shelter from the Storm.”
“It is on all of us, to quote an incredible songwriter who just happened to be born in my state, to ensure that our nation’s democracy is our ‘Shelter from the Storm,’” she said.
“It was very uplifting, very positive,” Jasinski said. “The crowd was excited, no matter who they were. I think it was very motivational.”
That night, the group attended the Republican Jewish Coalition’s event, courtesy of Coleman’s father-in-law Norm Coleman, a former mayor of St. Paul who was later elected to the U.S. Senate.
“They announced there were 16 U.S. senators there, and many governors,” Jasinski said of the gala. “Sarah Huckabee Sanders was there; we got to talk to her.
“I just tried not to pull out my phone and take pictures,” he laughed.