There’s no argument with the fact that Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher’s chance of being reelected in 2007 lies somewhere between slim and none. His problems have less to do with how he’s governed policy-wise and how he’s worked with the legislature than with how he’s governed as a practical matter – the methodology involved, or lack thereof. At the beginning of his tenure, he made the almost always fatal mistake of appointing inept people to the top jobs – not inept as a matter of intelligence but as a matter of inexperience and lack of technical know-how – apparently without firmly outlining the ground-rules to be followed.
Whether with his knowledge/instruction or not, a number of these appointees assumed that the system would be exploited in the usual ways, i.e., mainly through patronage. The actual business of government doesn’t change all that much from one administration to the next since career employees actually run things, making changes as directed by the legislature. Fletcher was the first republican to hold the job in 32 years, but had been in government in elective offices on both the state and national levels long enough to know how things are done.
Without question, he knew that there would be shakeups in the assignment of jobs throughout the state (to-the-victor-belongs-the-spoils thing), but it appears that neither he nor his lieutenants had yet arrived in the age of electronics. They didn’t realize that the use of cell-phones and gadgets like the popular blackberries generate trails as good as or better than the ones left by paper. Though operating just as the democrats had for 32 years and decades before that in applying the “patronage principle” (unfair as it is most of the time, especially regarding protected “merit” jobs), they left well-defined documents outlining just a few instances of mismanagement. Whereas the attorneys general throughout the 32 years preceding 2003 were democrats and never raised an eyebrow to the malpractice in the merit area, the current attorney general, Greg Stumbo, with his own aspirations to be governor, is also a democrat and pulled out all the stops in prosecuting alleged merit violations.
Rather than fighting the relatively harmless misdemeanor charges that were bogging down government while causing enormous attorney fees, Fletcher pardoned all who were indicted, including the state republican-party chairman, Darrell D. Brock, Jr. At this point, this problem – and virtually only this – is what stands between Fletcher and another term, but it has been used like a hammer by both democrats and some state newspapers, notably the Lexington Herald-Leader, the state’s 2nd largest, to crush Fletcher’s operation.
Lieutenant Governor Steve Pence, a former federal prosecutor, bailed out of the reelection effort in June, making his announcement to desert the ticket while the governor was out of state. This, however, is what he said in August 2005: "The power to grant pardons is a privilege the governor has every right to utilize … I am sure he feels, as most Kentuckians do, that it is time to get back to doing the state's business" (Lexington Herald-Leader, 30 August 2005). In looking back through the records during the course of the current inquiries, investigators found that violations such as the ones cited had been rampant for decades, some of which were actually not clear of the statute of limitations when the current AG took office.
Fletcher’s predecessor, Paul Patton, pardoned two state officials and two union officials facing felony indictments accruing to election irregularities in his 1995 election, and used state police and state vehicles in carrying out sexual assignations at various locations with his patronage dispenser in a western Kentucky county. The attorney general, democrat Ben Chandler, forced the election matter, but either saw no need or felt no need for looking into the patronage/sexual matter, obviously fueled by the marital infidelity on the part of both participants.
It has been ruled at the lowest level of the court system, the District Court, that Fletcher cannot be prosecuted for a crime – or at least a mere misdemeanor – while in office. It remains to be seen as to whether or not Stumbo’s office (the AG has been barred by the court from personally handling the matter) will appeal that ruling. Stumbo’s conflict of interest is transparent, especially since he is on the record as stating he would be interested in running for Fletcher’s job if the governor became “unpopular.”
There’s one declared candidate for the Republican ticket in 2007, Billy Harper, Fletcher’s statewide finance chairman in 2003. Two or three other high-profile republicans are considering the race, with Senate President David Williams expressing doubt that Fletcher can be reelected, and it seems apparent that Senator Mitch McConnell, if not rebuking Fletcher, is also not supporting him in a reelection bid. Fletcher has not dislodged Brock from the chairmanship of the party, but Brock, one of the pardoned, should resign that post.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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