Meet the Star Tribune’s “Deep Throat” Andy Aplikowski 

Andy Aplikowski seems obsessed with attacking me over the years because: It is long been my belief that Andy Aplikowski was the source of the June 3, 2007, leak of the Star Tribune article about Dwight Tostenson’s internal GOP party memo.

In the past Andy has claimed that I was the reason he drank too much and smoked too much and was ostracized from the MN GOP because he supported my run for party chair in 2007. Andy’s position and reputation within the MN GOP was destroyed long before he was a minor player involved with my 2007 chair campaign. Others have well documented Andy’s displays of public drunkenness at official MN GOP functions and his unsubstantiated attacks on less radical GOP officials and candidates he did not agree, especially former Chairman Ron Carey.

In his latest, Andy Aplikowski blogs that I alone am to blame for the LateDabate radio talk show being removed from Hope FM 95.9 radio. He rants about a letter I sent to the station manager complaining about the host Jack Tomczak harassing me on social media and guests on the talk show telling outright lies. He rails that I had a date incorrect in the letter. He conveniently fails to mention that all inaccuracies were corrected when the station manager called me and discussed the matter and I sent a second follow up letter to the station. All this happened before Jack Tomczak and the station management met to discuss numerous complaints about his program and his personal attacks on people he disagrees with. Tomczak admitted the station would have allowed him to continue broadcasting but required the show to be pre-recorded so that station management could review the content. The decision to take the show off the air was Jack Tomczak’s!

The truth is Andy is a very sad and troubled young man who often flies off the handle and tells lies, throws bombs and misrepresents facts in his attempt to get noticed by someone or anyone. Andy is an immature pathetic cry baby who refuses to accept responsibility for his own actions. He claims to be a capitalist conservative purest while having to work for his Mother business. Just look at his blog attacks on Dr. Ron Paul and the members of Ron Paul's team in Minnesota and you understand how unglued Andy is.

Although I can’t definitively prove my suspicions on the Dwight Tostenson’s internal GOP party memo here is what I can state as fact.

I ran in 2007 against Ron Carey for the chair of the MN GOP. Andy would show up occasionally to our home to help in mailings. Andy was never an official member of the campaign staff or kitchen cabinet, only an occasional volunteer. One evening in mid May 2007, Andy showed up at our home during a letter stuffing event that was attended by a number of my neighbors, their children and some of my campaign staff. Andy pulled out of his pocket a number of printed pages and declared he had an internal MN GOP document that he was going to release to the Star Tribune that would put an end to Ron Carey’s domination over the MN GOP. He implied that he got the document from Michael Barrett, a former candidate for Congress in the 7th CD. The document was an internal memo, dated February 15, 2007, and written to members of the MN GOP Executive Board by Dwight Tostenson, a former worker at state party headquarters.

Aplikowski handed me the papers and I read the front page. I handed them back to him and told them that, “I believed that this document is a fake and likely planted by the Carey/Brodkorb camp. That no one was that stupid to violate the laws pertaining to employee pension payments.” I have witnesses/neighbors who will testify that this is exactly what happened. I told him I would not have anything to do with the document. Tim Wilkin, who was part of the campaign inner circle was there and also read the document. Andy left shortly there after but e-mailed me the document a few days or weeks later followed by a phone call saying he had verified the truthfulness of the document. I told him again that I would not have anything to do with it. In June 2007 the document appeared in the Star Tribune, and from the detailed investigation by the Star Tribune reporters and the admission by Dwight Tostenson in the article it appears the document was in fact true.

A firestorm resulted. Carey labeled me as an enemy of the MN GOP and my campaign as the source of the leaking of the memo to the Star Tribune. The reporters from the Star Tribune admitted to me that they had met with Aplikowski before the story broke but would not verify my suspicions that Andy provided the memo to them. Still it’s funny that Andy seems to be the Star Tribune’s go too guy for quotes and information dealing with the current upheaval in the MN GOP.

Some people never grow up and accept their responsibilities for their actions. Andy’s blog postings mostly remain personal attacks against people he does not like or politicians who do not meet his hypocritical standard of Republican Party purity. I’ll stake my character and reputation against Andy Aplikowski’s any day.