KyKurmudgeon

A few thoughts on poll results

A few observations on the latest Herald-Leader/Action News 36 poll results in regard to legislative issues and the approval/disapproval numbers for the General Assembly:

1. I am encouraged to see the issue of domestic-partner benefits at state universities falling off the public's radar screen. Just 17 percent of respondents considered this to be one of their top two issues for the 2008 General Assembly. Surely, that low number will reinforce the resolve who House Democrats, who managed to kill in this year's session a proposed ban on such benefits. Our universities will never reach the goals set for them in the higher education reforms of the 1990s if they are statutorily prohibited from competing with the top schools in the land for the best and brightest educators and researchers whatever their sexual orientation.

2. Sometimes, you gotta love the lengths politicians will go to in trying to spin poll results they don't find to their liking. Health insurance for children, higher teacher pay and allowing Kentuckians to vote on casino gambling are the top three legislative issues for Kentuckians, according to the polls findings. But not to Republican Senate President David Williams, whose party's president recently vetoed legislation that would expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, whose party's candidates often see their opponents endorsed by teacher's organizations and who personally has opposed sending a constitutional amendment on gambling to the voters. So, Williams skipped over the top three issues to talk up No. 4, checking the immigration status of anyone arrested. "Immigration is a true number," Williams told the Herald-Leader "but the other stuff represents what the (gubernatorial campaign) ad have talked about. Hmm! I seem to remember incumbent Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher exploiting the immigration issue during the campaign. So, how can it be any more of a "true number" than the others?

3. My take on the finding that more than 60 percent of Democrats approve of the way legislators are doing their job while more than two-thirds of Republicans disapprove? It could be that Democrats have a stronger faith in government in general than Republicans do.

Fletcher's "promotions list"

I missed Monday's gubernatorial debate on Kentucky Educational Television. But I noticed in news coverage of the event that Gov. Ernie Fletcher tried to pass off the alleged "hit list" that was a key piece of evidence in his BlackBerry Jam hiring scandal as being some kind of "promotions list."

That prompted me to pull out my copy of the "hit list," which allegedly was drafted by former Transportation Cabinet official Dan Druen. It's a memo on the subject: "Draft of Preliminary Personnel Actions; Terminations, Reversions, and Reassignments. It lists 32 names, nine under the heading "Completed Actions" and 23 under the heading "Pending Actions."

Of the completed actions, four of the people were listed as having been terminated, another had retired after  an involuntary transfer and the others had been transferred or demoted. Of the 23 pending actions, nine people were recommended for termination or firing, one was recommended for involuntary transfer and all but a couple of the others were recommended for reassignment.

Does that sound like a promotions list?

By the way, I learned today that investigators found the "hit list" in a box of documents the Transportation Cabinet turned over to Attorney General Greg Stumbo's office shortly after the hiring investigation began in May 2005. It was one of the reasons Stumbo said early on that there appeared to be "smoking gun" proof of violations of the law protecting merit system jobs from political discrimination. The list became a public record after it was included in court filings during the investigation.

So, it turns out Fletcher's folks in Transportation essentially ratted out themselves when they let the "hit list" be included with the other documents. That is so typical of the ineptness that so often has been the trademark of this administration.

SOX ROCK!!!!

Zero for my first 56 years; two four-game sweeps of the World Series in my last four years. As a long-suffering fan of the Boston Red Sox, I'm so thrilled I can't write anything negative about anyone today. I'm sure I'll get over that and return to being an opinionated SOB. Today, though, I'm enjoying the glow.

Numbers, more numbers and ethics

Sunday's column:

FRANKFORT — This and that as the numbers continue to tell the story:

Of course, the most important of those numbers is the double-digit lead Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear continues to hold over incumbent Gov. Ernie Fletcher in all of the independent polls.

In the latest Herald-Leader/Action News 36 survey, Beshear was 15 points ahead, a gap that prompted the president of the polling firm to echo former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards’ boast that he couldn’t lose unless he was “caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy” in describing Beshear’s seeming lock on this race.

Then, Del Ali of Research 2000, one-upped Edwards by adding, “I don’t even know if the live boy would hurt (Beshear). That’s where we are right now.”

Excuse me, but the live boy would hurt. This is still Kentucky, a state that unfortunately displayed some major homophobia by passing that misguided constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in 2004.

However, Beshear’s lead of 15-20 points has held constant from the primary into these closing days of the campaign.  Nothing Fletcher has said or done has moved the numbers. None of his messages have resonated with voters.

So, the governor may want to think about updating his resume. Barring some major catastrophe in the Beshear camp, it appears he will be out of a job Dec. 11.

I wonder how many Republicans wish they could rewind to May and switch their primary vote?

                                     * * *

Another set of numbers that help tell the story were contained in the finance reports the two campaigns filed Friday.

During the two-week period covered by the reports, Beshear raised more than $1 million, putting his total for the fall campaign over $6 million.

Fletcher took in $261,323 during the reporting period, raising his total to about $3.7 million.

It’s not surprising that Beshear is as dominant in the money race as he is in the polls. Money flows more freely to favorites. But there is another interesting comparison that’s indicative of Fletcher’s problems.

In 2003, Fletcher raised and spent nearly $5.6 million in the fall campaign. Now, as an incumbent with all the powers of that office at his fingertips, he is struggling to reach $4 million.

An incumbent with any hope of re-election ought to be about to raise more money to keep the office than he had to spend to win it.

                                      * * *

On Tuesday, the Legislative Ethics Commission wisely reversed a 12-year-old opinion that allowed lawmakers to solicit lobbyists for contributions to political parties.

A day later, commission officials told an interim legislative committee that other changes in the ethics rules are needed, changes that would require statutory approval.

One of the commission’s proposals would give Kentucky a “no cup of coffee” rule that would bar lobbyists from buying lawmakers meals and drinks in one-on-one or small group settings.

Currently, an individual lobbyist or his employer can spend up to $100 a year buying meals or drinks for an individual legislator. But since such spending must be reported, most lawmakers operate under a de facto “no cup of coffee” rule now because they don’t want their names appearing in the reports.

Even with a “no cup of coffee” rule, lawmakers would still be free to attend the myriad receptions thrown during every legislative session. But as commission Executive Director Anthony Wilhoit told the committee, mischief is more likely to occur in intimate settings than at large events open to all legislators or all members of a given caucus.

Other commission recommendations would prohibit campaign contributions from lobbyists’ employers and political action committees during a regular legislative session, bar lawmakers from traveling out of state at the expense of lobbyists or their employers (but allow in-state travel of this nature), prohibit mass mailings using state resources during the closing days of a campaign, and extend all the rules applying to lawmakers to non-incumbent candidates running for the General Assembly.

Some of these excellent proposals were included in a bill that made it out of House committee in 2006 but never came up for a floor vote.

In 2008, lawmakers should heed the ethics panel’s advice and make these changes.

Ethics, malpractice and other quickies

1. Today's opinion from the Legislative Ethics Commission reversing a 1995 opinion represents a welcome return to reason in regard to legislators soliciting lobbyists for political contributions. While the ethics law passed in 1993 clearly prohibits lawmakers from asking lobbyists to contribute to their own political campaigns, the 1995 opinion said they were free to ask lobbyists to contribute to political parties. That interpretation of the law made no sense when it was issued, and it made even less sense after the commission said in 2005 that legislators could not hit up lobbyists on behalf of legislative caucus campaign committees. Why should lawmakers be able to do something to help their parties that they can't do to help their own campaigns or their caucus committees? It's good to see the ethics panel correct the mistake made in 1995.

2. Gov. Ernie Fletcher's compromise proposal on medical malpractice lawsuits sounds a whole lot like the alternative legislative Democrats have been offering in recent years to Senate Republicans' proposed constitutional amendment that would allow limits on damage awards in such suits. Fletcher has supported caps on damages in the past. While I must say this flip-flop puts Fletcher on the right side (the victims' side) of this issue, it's still a flip-flop.

3. Latest SurveyUSA numbers have Fletcher trailing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear by 20 percentage points. If this were a game from the early days of Monday Night Football, Don Meredith might be getting ready to sing us a song.

4. Lexington's leaders appear to have come down with a case of arena envy now that Louisville is getting a big new facility downtown.

He doesn't get out much, does he?

In response to one of the personality questions the H-L's Jack Brammer and John Stamper asked each of the gubernatorial candidates, Gov. Ernie Fletcher said his favorite restaurant for home cooking is the Jazzman Cafe in Winchester. I hate to be the bearer of more bad news for Fletcher, but the Jazzman Cafe closed a few years ago.

GO SOX!!!!!!!

Make it twice in my lifetime.

Who can hit target on McConnell's back?

Sunday's column:

If you punched in the Web address for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (www.dscc.org) last week, you might have thought momentarily that you had been misdirected to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Web site.

Hit the DSCC site at the right moment, and you would see McConnell’s smiling face dominating the top of the page. A different picture of the Senate minority floor leader was featured in a small box just below the top of the page. And his name appeared twice in the news headlines on the right of the page.

When you looked more closely, of course, you found that the beaming visage of McConnell at the top of the page floated above a headlined that read “McConnell Refuses To Explain Why He Misled Kentucky” about his staff’s involvement in the swift-boating of Graeme Frost, the 12-year-old selected by Democrats to serve as the voice and face of their efforts to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Looking more closely at the picture in the smaller box below, you learned that it accompanied an announcement that Kentucky’s senior senator had been inducted (for the second time) into the DSCC’s Hall of Shame. An explanation for bestowing this dubious honor on McConnell noted:

“Kentucky currently has 111,000 uninsured children and the proposed bill would cover almost half of those children. But President Bush staunchly opposed the legislation despite strong bipartisan support. So when Mitch McConnell was faced with choosing between President Bush and Kentucky’s uninsured children who did he pick? George Bush.”

One of the news headlines on the DSCC page dealt with a story that said McConnell knew his staff had been involved in swift-boating Frost before he denied that involvement in a taped interview with Mark Hebert of Louisville’s WHAS-TV (Channel 11). The other headline topped an editorial from The Courier-Journal that questioned McConnell’s truthfulness in this affair.

What’s clear from the emphasis the DSCC site places on McConnell – and from the negative ads that have been airing all summer, courtesy of the Democrats’ campaign committee and a handful of so-called 527 groups – is that McConnell has a large target on his back going into his 2008 re-election campaign.

And the man who seemingly had the golden political touch for more than two decades now finds circumstances breaking against him.

He’s joined at the hip with an unpopular president in support of an unpopular war.

He’s joined at the hip with an unpopular president in opposition to expansion of a popular health insurance program.

(Now that the House has failed to override President Bush’s veto, look for D’s to pass a continuation measure and bring this issue back up for vote during the middle of next year’s congressional campaign.)

He’s just been caught being untruthful about his staff’s crude (albeit abortive) attempt to figuratively beat up on a 12-year-old boy for partisan political purposes.

And back here in Kentucky, his creation, Gov. Ernie Fletcher (whom I often referred to as Mini-Mitch before he earned in his own right the designation Boy Governor) has imploded, damaging the Republican Party so badly that Trey Grayson, the very able young secretary of state, has been put at risk in the upcoming election.

But the biggest threat to McConnell comes from Senate Democrats’ desire to get revenge for the defeat of their own floor leader, Tom Daschle, in 2004.

In 2008, which appears to be shaping up as the kind of banner year for Democrats that 2004 was for Republicans, the DSCC might be counted on to help the right challenger raise sufficient money to compete with the $15 million or so that McConnell will have for his campaign. And the 527s aligned with Senate Democrats’ agenda could be expected to continue pounding McConnell with negative ads.

But the thing about that target on McConnell’s back is this: It’s meaningless unless the D’s come up with a viable candidate.

And frankly, Attorney General Greg Stumbo, the only entry in the field at the moment, has too much baggage to be that candidate. Plus, he seems to forget that the only statewide race he has won was in a three-way field with a very weak Republican and a perennial gadfly. And even against such minor competition, Stumbo failed to get a majority of the vote.

If  Democrats want to take advantage of the target on McConnell’s back, a better candidate must emerge – and soon.

Boy Governor returns

Today's column:

Although they’ve popped up a few times on the KyKurmudgeon blog, the phrases “Boy Governor” and “Kiddie Korps” last appeared in this column in September 2006.

It’s not that Gov. Ernie Fletcher and the folks around him found a magical pill to cure what some prominent Republicans have called their “political ineptitude.” They’ve continued to make their share of missteps during the intervening 13 months. But their recent stumbles haven’t plumbed the depths of juvenile silliness that earned them their nicknames. Besides, the original Kiddie Korps left the building long ago.

But last week, Boy Governor and a new group – call them the Kampaign Kiddies – returned to form when they accused Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear of violating the state constitution’s ban on same-sex marriage because his campaign finance report listed contributions from same-sex couples.

As usual, though, BG and his KK didn’t follow their absurd “guilt by association” reasoning to its logical conclusion. Had they done so, they might have realized how the argument could be turned back on them.

For if the acceptance of contributions from same-sex couples constitutes ironclad proof that Beshear supports same-sex marriage, the same flawed logic must lead you to the conclusion that the use of a convicted felon in one of his anti-casino ads constitutes ironclad proof that BG endorses embezzling.

But hey, we already knew BG is soft on crime, including felonies, from his blanket pardon of aides and cronies indicted in the BlackBerry Jam hiring investigation. And that brings us to another recent BG/KK moment.

Someone – in the administration, in the campaign or among Fletcher’s apologists – decided it would be a really neat idea to file a complaint against Attorney General Greg Stumbo with the Executive Branch Ethics Commission, a complaint alleging that Stumbo and his aides violated ethics laws by pursuing the hiring investigation.

Then, that same someone decided it would be an equally neat idea to leak the complaint to various members of the media.

Let’s examine the brilliance of pursuing this strategy on behalf of a governor who was indicted by a special grand jury, who saw 14 members of his entourage indicted in open court and 14 other indictments returned under seal, who pardoned the world in regard to the hiring investigation and who cut a deal with Stumbo to get the charges against him dropped.

Modern political campaigns being what they are, this negative side of BG’s record will be fodder for the opposition. We saw such ads in the primary; we’ve seen more in the general election. There is nothing BG and his KK can do about that except to fight back with their own ads and hope the public tunes out all the negativity.

But by filing a complaint against Stumbo, BG and his KK brought the hiring investigation back into the news with fresh headlines and stories rehashing the whole scandal in the closing days of the campaign, reminding Kentuckians of BG’s greatest failings just before they go into the booth to vote up or down on his re-election. (The administration’s persistence in attempting to depose whistle-blower Doug Doerting has also kept the hiring scandal in the headlines during the campaign.)

Only in the insular world of Boy Governor and his Kampaign Kiddies would it be considered a smart political move to do something that prompts new stories about an old scandal.

In the real world, it was just another political blunder by folks who are masters of that particular craft.

Catch-up quickies

1. A couple of comments posted while I was on vacation raised the question of whether I would have anything to say about recently released report on a possible conflict of interest in the handling of the Kentucky Central Life Insurance Co. liquidation. The answer is yes, I do have something to say. Former Jefferson Circuit Judge Richard Revell, who reviewed the report when it was prepared in 1995, says criticism of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear on this issue "has absolutely no merit." Since Revell is a Republican who supports Gov. Ernie Fletcher's re-election and has contributed to his campaign, I consider his defense of the work Beshear and the Stites & Harbison law firm did on the Kentucky Central case to be particularly compelling.

2. I found it interesting that Robbie Rudolph, Fletcher's running mate in the gubernatorial race, had not contributed to the campaign prior to the filing of the finance report last week. I wonder if he was just waiting until after these reports were filed to decide how much of his personal wealth to put into the campaign.

3. Back in the days when gubernatorial elections tended to be settled in the Democratic primary, a fall race that prompted as little buzz as this one is producing would have been understandable. When I started thinking about how little excitement this campaign is generating, I was tempted to compare it to former Gov. Paul Patton's sleepwalk to re-election against the token candidacy of Peppy Martin in 1999. But I decided that would be unfair to Peppy. After all, she did liven things up with her prom dress.