Keith Downey is running for State Senate District 49 for the first time after representing Edina in the Minnesota House of Representatives for four years.
Q: How long have you been representing Edina and what made you want to run for that position in the first place?
A: I have been in the Minnesota House of Representatives for 4 years. I’m finishing up my second term and I ran for office four years ago because I saw two things happening and felt like government and politics were in many ways very broken and I thought I should be part of the solution, not just sitting on the sidelines and talking about it. The first major issue is our economic competiveness here in Minnesota coming from a business background and being with a firm that dealt with a lot of different industry sectors and a lot of different sized companies from early stage startups all the way through fortune 100 companies and large state and local government, I saw a decrease in the economic activity especially in the early stage investment area in the Minnesota economy and increasingly it became apparent to me that our tax and regulatory environment in Minnesota has become increasingly onerous. Especially compared to other states and neighboring states so we started to lose our competitive edge to the point where retirees in increasing number are moving to Florida and other states, taking with them their investments and their time on boards and their service mentoring for new business people in town. So we have had just a slow drain of capital both financial and human capital for quite a few years now. Number two was my experience as a management consultant doing project in state and local government. I mentioned that my firm specialized in a number of different industry sectors including local and state government, and that’s where I did most of my work. And when I saw them doing projects in these big agencies as if they were fundamentally not equipped for much of what we asked them to accomplish. And that is no criticism of the people it is just the nature of big agency bureaucracy who is governed by an executive and a legislative branch. Part B of that concern was that I saw that politicians passing laws and talking about all of the wonderful things that they were going to accomplish with their legislation and never following through to see if it was accomplished never really providing any real measurement mechanism to see if we were achieving the outcomes that they said we would and taking a lot of credit without delivering any of the results, that I think most people assume are coming with those programs and public expenditures. So just a sense that the government realm and political realm were essentially broken.
Q: What position are you running for this fall?
A: I am running for the state senate. The current state senator for our district (Geoff Michel) is retiring so the seat is an open seat. Instead of running for the house district that I am currently in, I decided to run for state senate and that is all of Edina, the western part of Bloomington, and a very small eastern part of Eden Prairie and a very small eastern part of Minnetonka.
Q: Personally what makes you Keith Downey?
A: [Laughs] you would have to ask my wife and kids. The best way to answer that is to give you a quick sense of my background and the things that I do and that I like. I grew up here in Edina my dad [Art Downey] taught in the schools here and is still coach of the swim team at the High School. I’m kind of an Edina born and bred guy and I lived in Wisconsin for many years and traveled a lot so I have seen quite a bit of the country and have pretty good exposure to areas other than here as well. My wife Amy and I have three kids, a daughter who is a sophomore in college, a senior there at EHS and a ninth grader at South View. So we are very much connected to the community and are very involved and engaged to the community I think on many fronts you would say that we are a fairly typical Edina family that is plugged in and doing our best to help the community.
Q: How does your job affect the students of Edina High School?
A: Way more than it probably should, one of the unfortunate results of funding the schools so significantly from state government, we actually fund about 80% of the local school districts budget from the state. One of the outcomes of that is that many, many of the decisions that should be made by local districts on the ground in their schools by principles and by teachers and by local school folks and families are decisions that instead are made by legislatures and politicians at the state and handed down as mandates to the schools. Your superintendent would make the comment and has before those about 85% of the major decisions about how he funds activities are handed to him by the state. So we have really put way to many controls and mandates on our local schools.
Q: Have you heard about the rally that Edina students had against you and if so what is your response?
A: I did hear about it, and obviously I didn’t attend and I guess I wouldn’t have a response, it’s a free country and there are free speech rights and I think that’s what they were exercising they are fully entitled to have their rally and speak their opinion and that is the wonderful part of a democracy and that’s why we all get to go and vote our opinions in November.
Q: Do you believe that you can relate to the students of Edina and represent them as opposed to just their parents?
A: Yeah absolutely I do, number one I was an Edina student at one point in time I roamed the very same halls that Edina students roam today, and number two I have three kids who are in the middle of their Edina experience or going on to college the process of going through elementary school and then junior high school and then seeing how that translates into college opportunities. I couldn’t be closer to that as a parent. I’m not an 18 year old kid, fair enough, but I have one, or a 17 year old and all of the things that you are experiencing in your High School years are happening right in my house, so I feel like I am actually quite close to what is going on at the schools.
