Amy Koch

Amy T. Koch (born October 8, 1971) was a member of the Minnesota Senate and its former Majority Leader. Koch represented District 19, which includes portions of Hennepin and Wright counties in the northwestern Twin Cities metropolitan area.

Service and leadership in Minnesota Senate
A Republican, Koch was first elected to the Senate in a special election held on November 22, 2005, after Senator Mark Ourada announced his resignation effective December 31, 2005. She was re-elected in the 2006 and 2010 general elections. She previously served as an assistant minority leader, and was the first woman to serve as Majority Leader, and the first Republican to do so since the end of the non-partisan era.

Koch previously served as a member of the Senate's Business, Industry and Jobs Committee, the Education Committee, the Energy, Utilities, Technology and Communications Committee, and the Transportation Committee. She also served on the Business, Industry and Jobs Subcommittee for Workforce Development, and on the Finance subcommittees for the E-12 Education Budget and Policy Division, the Economic Development and Housing Budget Division (on which she is the ranking minority member), the Transportation Budget and Policy Division, and the Transportation Budget and Policy Division-Transit Subdivision. Her special legislative concerns included transportation and reducing the size of government.

Koch has been an opponent of same-sex marriage. In 2009, she coauthored a bill (S.F. No. 1975) to amend the Minnesota Constitution declaring "A marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in Minnesota."

On December 15, 2011, Koch announced that she would not seek re-election, and resigned her position as majority leader. She said that she was resigning her leadership position immediately because her caucus could "not afford a lame duck leader in negotiations next session." Later in the day local news media reported that four Republican state senators indicated Koch had an "inappropriate" relationship with a male staffer. On December 21, Koch apologized for "engaging in a relationship with a Senate staffer," admitted to making "mistakes and errors in judgment," and stated, "It is important that I spend time now focusing on the challenging days ahead as I work through some very personal issues."

Because of the timing of her resignation, she became the shortest-tenured majority leader in Minnesota Senate history.

Education and military service
Koch attended Concordia College in Moorhead before enlisting in the United States Air Force in 1992. She served in the U.S. Air Force as a Russian Linguist, graduating from the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey in Monterey, California and was assigned to the National Security Agency. For her work with the agency, she received the Joint Service Achievement Medal. Koch received an honorable discharge from the U.S. military in 1996 and later attended St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, graduating in 1999.

Business owner
Koch is a part owner of HBK Properties LLC in Buffalo and Hance Utility Services, Inc., also in Buffalo.