Mark Kennedy is going down. His latest poll numbers put him 24 points behind Amy Klobuchar. A year ago in my last desperate hours as a moderate Republican I asked Paul, now at Business North magazine, if he would consider being my campaign manager if I challenged the Republican annointed congressman in the Republican Senate primary. Fortunately, Paul had a girl friend who would have killed him if he’d said yes which he wouldn’t have done anyway because he’s an intelligent young man.
In my brief flirtation with the Democratic party last April, when the polls showed Kennedy and Klobuchar neck-and-neck, I wrote one of my last columns in the Reader defending Klobuchar against her anti-war challenger in the Democratic primary.
Yesterday I saw the desperate Mark Kennedy pull out a last gasp ad to save his campaign. It was a grossly silly ad calling Amy Klobuchar a hypocrite for her stands against big oil and pharmaceutical companies because she owns mutual funds which contain “thousands” of dollars in those investiments. “Thousands” mind you…..”thousands!!!” Now let me capticalize and italicize that: THOUSANDS!!!
At the end of the ad Mark’s serious looking face popped up with an overdub of him saying: “I’m Mark Kennedy and I approve of this message.”
A few days ago as I was about to return from Denmark I read emails between Chris and Mel about their discovery that my recent radio ads didn’t pass muster with the Federal Elections Commission because I hadn’t said: “I’m Harry Welty and I approve of this message.” Because I had written and delivered the ad in my own voice I thought it was pretty obvious that I approved of my own message.
Now, after the Kennedy ad, I can appreciate the value of this FEC prescribed language. Kennedy had to admit in his own voice that he approved of the dim-witted mud, that his ad was slinging. It revealed the lie behind his early ads which made him out to be such nice guy.
Mark Kennedy is going down and I approve of this message.
