by Steve Timmer

Oct 30, 2012, 2:30 PM

Tweedle Kurt and Tweedle Keith II

The original story linking Kurt Bills and Keith Downey — and explaining why there isn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between them —  can be found here.

I have been trying to reach Keith Downey by email, at his House email address and at his campaign email address, for weeks. I’ve been trying to reach him by telephone, too, leaving messages at his Capitol number and, because the calls were never returned, at his cell number listed on his House of Representatives biography. I left a message on his cell yesterday; he finally answered on his cell today when I called, but when I identified myself, he hung up.

I’ve tried to ask Keith Downey these questions, perfectly straightforward and reasonable questions for a constituent to ask:

Are you still Kurt Bills’ campaign chair?

What role did you have in the Kurt Bills television ad that aired during the Vikings game last Thursday night?

Do you approve of the ad?

If you don’t approve of it, do you think that the Bills’ campaign ought to retract it?

For the very few of you who don’t know about the ad smear of Klobuchar, here’s an earlier LeftMN story about it. You can also listen to the famous Nine Minute Explanation of the ad on the LeftMN Radio Hour.

We may reasonably infer that Keith Downey doesn’t want to answer these questions. But jeepers, who can blame him? If I was in his shoes I wouldn’t either.

The ad is based on a Daily Caller story by Matthew Boyle whose story is in turn based on a source by the name of Richard Hettler, who Amy Klobuchar prosecuted for theft by swindle and felony failure to provide child support. The whole thing is based on the preposterous story that Amy Klobuchar named two promissory notes, made by Tom Petters’ company, as criminal defendants. Which, of course, is completely and utterly absurd.

Amy Klobuchar carried SD41 (which is more or less where Downey is running for a seat in the Senate in the new SD49) when she ran against Mark Kennedy in her initial contest for the seat; she will certainly carry SD49 this year.

Residents of SD49 need to know, however, that Kurt Bills was championed by Keith Downey — in one one the greatest errors in political judgment in Minnesota history — right from the get go in Bills’ race for the MNGOP endorsement. Downey stepped out early, endorsed Bills, and became his campaign chair.

Update: And lest you think I am just saying that about Downey’s judgment, according to the Strib, Klobuchar outpolls Bills sixty-five to twenty-two percent. (I couldn’t resist writing out the numbers to make it take longer.) According to the same article, Bills polls less than half of Republicans. First there was “Twenty-Points Shortridge;” now we may have “Forty-Points Downey.”