COMMENT Commentators

In the Al Smith KET clambake COMMENT ON KENTUCKY (which I almost never miss) on 17 November, the consensus among the news-worthies (Hebert, Cross, Ellison, Bartleson) was that the democrats are up a tree without a ladder in the matter of fielding a credible candidate in the 2007 gubernatorial circus, since they seemed to think that State Auditor Crit Luallen and Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, who have respectfully declined to run, were the best bets. A lot of names were thrown around – former governors Carroll and Jones (old guys), Terry McBrayer (another old guy one of the panelists said would split the party), Attorney General Stumbo, Congressman Chandler.

Former lieutenant governor Steve Henry was mentioned and probably made the most poignant pronouncement via a video presentation in which he called Jones the worst governor in the state’s history…or something like that. He brought up the health insurance fiasco during the Jones administration that eventuated in nearly all health insurance companies simply pulling up stakes and leaving the state. Jones had help from the legislature, of course, but a number of legislators, including Speaker Blandford, were being trucked off to the big house during his tenure (though Jones was not involved in their shenanigans) and many of the remaining solons might have been too worried about “other shoes dropping” to get their minds on the business at hand. If memory serves, Jones and gang tried to force the companies to take customers they wouldn’t risk…and so it goes…and so they left.

The panelists mentioned the difficulties facing the republicans, also, sort of writing off Governor Fletcher’s chances and giving the most attention to Billy Harper of Paducah, who has the money to buy the seat, the voters willing, of course. There’s an attractive “Harper for Governor” Web site, on which Harper states that he’s in the race for good. The panel said a lot of good things about Harper, not least among which were mentions of things he quietly does to help a lot of people. Nobody could seem to remember anything about Harper’s running mate, a man named Wilson, and I couldn’t (or at least didn’t) find any information about him on the Web site.

There was concrete consensus that Ben Chandler could walk away with the prize with one hand tied behind his back, a chance he would never have again. They were probably right on that, given the troubles Fletcher has had. TV newsman Mark Hebert gave a vivid description of the grand jury’s report concerning the merit business – a scathing bit of stuff, though one wonders how much of the material was jurors-generated and how much was Stumbo-generated.

Stumbo is on the record as being interested in running if Fletcher should become unpopular, a condition he’s tried in spades to bring to pregnant fruition. In a COMMENT program last year, after all the merit stuff hit the wall, the panelists sort of shrugged it off – old hands, at that, who’d been around a while – as just the same stuff democrats had been doing for decades. They and a lot of the rest of us got fooled when the matter that should have gone the ethics/personnel route wound up like solid gold in the AG’s office. What was perfectly okay for the good-old-boy democrats simply wouldn’t do for the nasty republicans.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark