And Then There Were Six

Much as I would love this post to refer to the withdrawal from the presidential race of the three republican evolution-deniers – Huckabee, Brownback and Tancredo – and the spontaneous head-explosion of Rudy Guiliani due to terminal abortion confusion, I’m afraid it doesn’t.

The cleanest and most progressive candidate in the Kentucky Democratic Gubernatorial Primary has dropped out. State Treasurer Jonathan Miller announced this afternoon that he is withdrawing and endorsing former Lt. Gov. Steve Beshear.

Two weeks out from the May 22 primary, Miller couldn’t seem to crack double-digits in the polls. The latest poll, from Survey USA last week, showed that not only had Miller dropped from 8 percent to 7 percent, but Party Traitor Bruce Lunsford had jumped from 20 percent to 29 percent.

Given that Lunsford is leading the Democratic candidates despite being a Republican, Miller staying in the race created the very real possibility that November’s general election would lack an actual Democratic candidate.

If you’re thinking Lunsford is the Joe Lieberman of Kentucky – stop. Compared to Lunsford, Lieberman is a paragon of Democratic loyalty. More on Lunsford's perfidy below.

Beshear is the second choice of a lot of Miller supporters and other progressives, including Change for Kentucky/Democracy for America of Kentucky.

But the anti-Lunsford vote is still split among Beshear (23 percent) and four others: former Lt. Gov. Steve Henry at 18 percent, State House Speaker Jody Richards at 9 percent, attorney and gadfly Gatewood Galbraith at 6 percent and demolition contractor Otis Hensley at 1 percent.

Don’t look for either Galbraith or Hensley to quit – they’ve both finished statewide races with less than 10 percent of the vote before, and it doesn’t seem to bother them.

Steve Henry is getting slammed in both the polls (dropping 4 points in two weeks) and the press, as we get to enjoy a new Henry-is-even-more-corrupt-than-we-thought story with our morning coffee just about every day.

That wouldn’t be such a handicap if Henry weren’t defending himself with the most obvious, lame and stupid series of lies since Alberto Gonzales last testified. At this rate, Henry may end up with fewer votes than Otis.

But he won’t drop out. He’s married to a former Miss America, dadgummit, and that means he gets to be governor!

That leaves Jody Richards. I’ve never been a Richards fan – he’s nowhere near bright and he lets the Republican Senate Majority Leader beat him up at will. Ask anybody in Kentucky what’s the best thing about Jody Richards and they’ll all say the same thing:

“He’s nice.”

Yep, just what you want in a candidate going up against the republican attack machine.

Jody: If you must be nice, then be nice to the Democratic voters of Kentucky and drop out now!

Miller’s and Richards’ supporters added to Beshear’s, plus half the undecideds, will put Beshear over the top.

I'm no fan of Beshear's (his lobbying for predatory payday loan companies makes me sick), but he's by far the best candidate left in the race. And that's despite the handicap of his running mate: State Senator Dan Mongiardo, who won the lasting enmity of most Kentucky progressives by sponsoring our lovely gay hate amendment in 2004.

Yes, it matters very much whom the Democrats nominate, even though any one of them could beat incumbent Gov. Ernie Fletcher in November. Well, maybe not Henry.

It's a close call as to which is more important: defeating Fletcher, or defeating Lunsford.

Lunsford’s a multi-millionaire (he sank $8 million into his 2003 primary run before quitting), supposedly willing to put his personal fortune into the general election. That’s why some seriously deluded/desperate Democrats are claiming he has the best chance to beat Fletcher.

Bruce Lunsford made his millions off the backs of two groups: the poor, sick old people he threw out of his nursing homes to make room for richer patients, and the poor, trusting Kentucky families who lost their life savings investing in Lunsford’s company before he bankrupted it.

His vicious ads attacking State Attorney General Ben Chandler in the 2003 gubernatorial primary fatally wounded Chandler in the general election, especially after Lunsford dropped out of the primary and endorsed Ernie Fletcher.

Read that again, slowly: A Democratic primary candidate endorsed the Republican primary winner. After promising to support the Democratic primary winner.

Ernie won, and gave Lunsford a nice job. Since 1995, Lunsford has given more than $40,000 to Republican candidates, and less than $12,000 to Democratic candidates.

Now he wants to be the Democratic nominee.

Ernie Fletcher has been one of the worst governors in Kentucky history. Cleaning up the mess he’s created will take years if not decades and billions of dollars Kentucky doesn’t have. We can’t afford another four months, never mind another four years of Ernie Fletcher.

But a lot of Democrats will be voting for Fletcher – if Bruce Lunsford gets the nomination.

There's more: "And Then There Were Six" >>

Do We Really Need A Governor?

Good Grief, this is a depressing primary season, and no, I'm not talking about the presidential race.

Here in Kentucky, the two Democrats topping the polls for the gubernatorial primary May 22 are the Traitor and the Crook.

Bruce Lunsford, a self-made millionaire who made his fortune by kicking poor old people out of his nursing homes and cheating thousands of investors out of their life savings, is running on the promise that he'll run Kentucky the way he ran his businesses.

God help us.

Lunsford's also claiming to be a "real Democrat" even though he dropped out of the 2003 primary to endorse the Republican nominee - now governor - Ernie Fletcher. He's spent the last four years giving tens of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates.

He's the Traitor, but he's leading the seven Democratic candidates with 20 percent in the most recent polling.

Tied with Lunsford at 20 percent in the polls is the Crook: former Lieutenant Governor Steve Henry, who is currently under investigation by a special prosecutor for playing fast and loose with campaign funds. Henry is married to a former Miss America, Heather French, and is an orthopedic surgeon who pleaded guilty a few years ago to playing fast and loose with Medicare reimbursements.

There are loyal Democrats in this state who will seriously vote for the Republican if either Henry or Lunsford wins the primary.

If they don't kill themselves first.

Another former Lieutenant Governor, Steve Beshear, is at 15 percent in the latest Survey USA poll. But he's getting pounded by Lunsford and others for his support, back in the '90s, of "payday lenders" who prey on poor working people who have no alternatives to paying 400 percent annual interest or more to get cash in advance of their paychecks.

State House Speaker Jody Richards is at 12 percent according to Survey USA, but he's in such bad financial straits he and his running mate, former Secretary of State John Y. Brown III, are reduced to begging their family members (scroll down to 7th graf) for money. Jody's been a no-show at candidate events lately, apparently recovering (or in hiding) from a legislative session that left the House Democrats looking even more feckless than usual. Oh, yeah, his campaign manager defected.

State Treasurer Jonathan Miller, Hope of the Progressives, is languishing at 8 percent. He's doing pretty well with fundraising, and has his third TV ad out, but his poll numbers have people writing him off five weeks before the election.

For pity's sake, Miller's tied with perennial candidate and professional maniac Gatewood Galbraith, who could actually take this primary if the predictions of record-breakingly low turnout are correct.

Listen: people live for politics in this state. In lots of places, you can't even get cable, and politics is the only entertainment. Yet five weeks before the primary, nobody's talking about the election. It's all the crummy spring weather and Don Imus.

It's going to come down to who can get their 14 loyal supporters up off their butts Tuesday morning and out to the polls.

If it rains on primary day, we might have a seven-way tie - three votes each.

There's more: "Do We Really Need A Governor?" >>

Feds After Leading KY Gubernatorial Candidate

(One Update Below)

Don't you wish your gubernatorial races were this much fun?

Via Bluegrass report, Mark Hebert of WHAS-TV in Louisville is reporting that former Lt. Gov. Steve Henry's questionable campaign finances have been referred to the U.S. Attorney in Louisville.

Henry is - or was - leading the polls in the seven-way contest for the Democratic nomination for Kentucky governor. Henry, who was lite guv from 1995-2003, dropped out of the 2003 gubernatorial race to deal with charges of Medicare fraud in his orthopedic surgery practice.

For the past several months, Mark Nickolas at Bluegrass Report has been covering new accusations that Henry violated campaign finance laws in raising money for a Senate campaign that never got off the ground.

About now, his six competitors in the race are struggling to stop laughing long enough to answer reporters' phone calls.

I've said for years that Kentucky political shenanigans rank second only to Louisiana's. Looks like we might be moving to the top of the list.

The only question is whether the U.S. Attorney can get an indictment before the May 22 primary.

Update 1 - Via Kevin Drum at Political Animal, the fabulous Paul Krugman (damn you, TimesSelect!) covers a study showing probable anti-Democrat bias in the local corruption cases chosen by the shrub Justice Department. If the Henry case falls into that category, it'll be the first favor shrub has ever done for Kentucky Democrats.

There's more: "Feds After Leading KY Gubernatorial Candidate" >>