Candidates Curtis, Daines square off on debates

Democratic Senate candidate Amanda Curtis has challenged Republican Steve Daines to a series of debates heading toward the Nov. 4 election.

The Daines’ campaign says Curtis hasn’t responded to its own invitation for a debate in Eastern Montana. Do that, it says, and they can talk.

Curtis, a state representative from Butte who has replaced U.S. Sen. John Walsh as the Democratic nominee in the race, went to the U.S. Post Office on Galena Street in Butte on Tuesday to mail her invitation.

The letter proposes debates in Billings, Bozeman, Butte, Great Falls, Helena, Kalispell and Missoula, as well as Montana’s seven American Indian reservations. It says answering tough questions posed by fair, impartial reporters is needed to give Montanans “the information they need to cast their ballots.”

What if Daines does not agree, she was asked.

“I think it’s interesting that he is clearly afraid of a 34-year-old, 130-pound high school math teacher and I don’t expect really anything less than more of the same from a congressman who has been a member of a do-nothing Congress,” she said.

Daines’ campaign spokesman Brock Lowrance said they sent a request to the Curtis camp last week for a debate in eastern Montana.

“We have yet to receive a response to that request,” he said. “After we get a response to that request we will see what else might be possible. We cannot let another decade go by without a debate in Eastern Montana.”

Walsh dropped out of the race last month amid charges that he plagiarized a thesis research paper used to earn his master’s degree in 2007. State Democrats then nominated Curtis as the nominee.