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" >>

Dirty Ernie and the Seven Ponies - Part 2

(Read Part One)

Let's say you're a Kentucky Democratic voter. You're stomping your hooves for the chance to kick out Ernie Fletcher, who beat your man Chandler for the governorship in 2003. You're in the voting booth in the May primary, looking at the seven names listed as Democratic nominees for governor. You can't believe your eyes. One of them is Bruce Lunsford. The exact same Bruce Lunsford who dropped out of the democratic primary in 2003 because polls showed he was losing bad to Chandler. The same Bruce Lunsford who then turned around and ENDORSED Ernie Fletcher, the republican nominee and eventual winner. The same Bruce Lunsford every breathing Kentucky Democrat blames for Chandler's loss to Ernie.

So here's the question: How much money will it take to persuade you to vote for Bruce Lunsford?

If you answered "there is not enough money on earth or in heaven," congratulations! You just graduated from the How Not To Piss Off Voters You Will Need Later class Greg Stumbo flunked out of.

Stumbo is Lunsford's running mate, and opinion is about evenly divided as to whether Greg has taken complete leave of his senses or has a major trick up his sleeve that no one can figure out. Stumbo is currently Attorney General, and could have cruised to re-election. He could have made a credible run for governor on his own. Instead he attaches himself to a coward, turncoat and criminal whose name will be forever attached to one of the biggest corporate financial disasters in Kentucky history.

Opinion's leaning more to the "gone nuts" theory since Greg started threatening union leaders who refused to endorse Lunsford. It'd be funny if it weren't downright scary.

Jody Richards is the Speaker of the House who is running with John Y. Brown III, former Secretary of State and son of the former governor. Richards also lost to Chandler in the 2003 primary, but at least he had the guts to stick it out until the votes were counted. Richards apparently doesn't have a campaign website, but he does have a long record of swearing to House colleagues that he would not run for governor in 2007. Jody's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and doesn't exactly impress on the stump. He also doesn't seem to know what to do with a large Democratic majority. Mostly, he lets the Republican minority slap him around pretty good.

You want fun? You want guns? You want drugs? You want a candidate who shows up stoned to community meetings and talks about how stoned he is? Gatewood Galbraith is your man! I'm probably going to vote for him, if only because he'd be non-stop entertainment, of which Frankfort could use some. His running mate is Mark Wireman, an engineer from eastern Kentucky (to balance Gatewood being a Lexington lawyer) who just retired from the Transportation Cabinet. Nobody ever heard of Wireman before, but as the Transportation Cabinet was the Central Cesspool of Ernie's Merit Mess, we're all agog to hear what Mark might know.

Otis Hensley is an Eastern Kentucky demolition contractor who's running with the nickname "Bullman" and the promise to "run the Bull out of Frankfort." He's even got a picture on his home page of himself riding a giant statue of a bull. He got a grand total of 9,372 votes in the 2003 primary, but it hasn't given him a big head. His web site is actually pretty detailed on numerous policy issues. And it reads like it was written by a real person, as opposed to a campaign consultant - funny and self-deprecating but serious. His running mate's name is Richard Robbins. The Louisville Courier-Journal columnist Billy Reed handicaps Hensley's chances at "a zillion to one." That's not fair. There are fewer than two million voters in Kentucky.

Some of you political science majors out there may be wondering what happens if none of the above lovelies (including yesterday's three) gets a majority of the primary vote on May 22. Yes, Kentucky does have a runoff provision. If no candidate gets at least 40 percent of the primary vote, the top two vote-getters face each other in a runoff.

It hasn't been used since it was established in 1992, but it looks likely to get a workout this year. There's been a lot of talk during the General Assembly this year about repealing the runoff provision. The big problem is the millions of dollars that the individual counties will have to pay to set up a second election just 35 days after the first one. County Clerks, who run elections and will have to come up with the money, are dead-set against it and want the provision nixed. But the goo-goos object that it's not fair to eliminate the runoff this close to the primary, after candidates filed while perhaps counting on a runoff.

But runoffs are tricky. Just when you think not having a runoff is going to help you, you end up on election night a close second to someone you might have beaten in a runoff.

So members of the General Assembly are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, filing contradictory bills and changing sides, sure of nothing except they've got just a few days left to completely screw up the most wide-open election in Kentucky history.

And if that's not enough to turn you off Kentucky politics for life, you can get your fix at Pol Watchers and Bluegrass Report.

There's more: "Dirty Ernie and the Seven Ponies - Part 2" >>

Dirty Ernie and the Seven Ponies - Part 1

There are seven - count 'em, seven - Democrats fighting for pole position in Kentucky's May gubernatorial primary. Not one of 'em a thoroughbred.

The two top Democrats in Kentucky aren't even in the race. Sixth District Congressman Ben Chandler bowed out once Democrats took back the U.S. House. As the senior Democrat from a red state, he's in tall cotton these days, snagging a plum spot on Appropriations even though he's in only his second term.

State Auditor Crit Luallen - a dedicated public servant with twice the brains and three times the government experience of anybody else in the race - was the first to decline the governor's race, causing a run on Prozac by goo-goo Democrats who forget that politicians of genuine integrity tend not to get far in this state.

Another statewide-elected Democrat is running as second-banana on a no-hoper ticket, a decision that has him being stalked by white-coated gentlemen from Eastern State Mental Hospital. More on the Attorney General tomorrow.

So, who's left? We've got the state Treasurer who's barely old enough to vote, two former Lieutenant Governors with loser reputations, a crooked businessman who specializes in throwing old poor people out of his nursing homes to make room for richer patients, a Speaker of the state house who can't get Democratic bills passed by his own Democratic majority, a gun nut who favors legalizing marijuana and a highway contractor who came in dead last in the 2003 primary.

Are you really going to make me tell you more? Fine. You asked for it.

Treasurer Jonathan Miller is actually not a bad guy, and is the goo-goo crowd's second choice after Luallen. (At 39, he's one of the youngest gubernatorial candidate ever.) His running mate, Irv Maze, is the Jefferson County Attorney who is both successful and popular in Louisville, but unknown elsewhere. Their two big handicaps are geographical - Miller is from Lexington, so they're a Golden Triangle ticket and thus mistrusted by the East and West - and religion - Miller is Jewish.

(Not that Kentuckians are anti-Semitic, it's just that Kentucky Democrats think everybody ELSE is anti-Semitic, and therefore doubt Miller could win the general election in November.)

Former Lieutenant Governor Steve Beshear used to be the goo-goos' champion, but that was back in the '80s, before he lost the 1987 gubernatorial primary. Since then, he's been a lawyer to big financial interests, which doesn't sit well with Defenders of the Poor and Downtrodden. If you want to start a fight among Kentucky Democrats, just mention the name of Beshear's running mate, State Senator Dan Mongiardo. Mongiardo, a physician, came within a whisker of beating incumbent U.S. Senator Jim Bunning in 2004. Doctor Dan's supporters seem to think he deserves Lite Guv as a consolation prize. His detractors say any Democrat worth his salt should have been able to crush the senile Bunning in a landslide, and Mongiardo deserved to lose for co-sponsoring an anti-gay marriage amendment that cost him lots of Democratic votes and failed to gain any others.

Steve Henry was Paul Patton's Lite Guv '95-'03. Another physician, but this one with charges of Medicare fraud to his discredit. His main claim to the Governor's Mansion seems to be that his wife is a former Miss America. We had one of those as First Lady before (Phyllis George Brown, '79-'83), and it wasn't pretty. Henry's running mate is Renee True, the Lexington Property Valuation Administrator, and the only woman running for guv or lite guv. I don't know anything against True, but I do know that after Henry was the first person to declare for governor last year, he had to hold off making it official for MONTHS because he couldn't find a running mate. Just about every dem in the state with a pulse turned him down. He barely got True on board in time for the January 30 filing deadline. I'm not sure what Renee is thinking.

Tomorrow: The Traitor, the Speaker, the Pot Head and the Bullman.

Read Part Two

Get the latest on Kentucky politics at Pol Watchers and Bluegrass Report.

There's more: "Dirty Ernie and the Seven Ponies - Part 1" >>