How did it all go wrong for D's?

Sunday's column:

FRANKFORT — With March Madness still semi-fresh in the memory, think of the 2008 General Assembly from a basketball perspective.

This session should have played out as a two-on-one break, with a Democratic governor and a Democratic House majority taking the offense to the Republican-controlled Senate.

Of course, teamwork remains a foreign concept for many Democrats, and particularly so for the Kentucky variety. As Gov. Steve Beshear – quoting the late Will Rogers – noted in a mid-session interview with the Herald-Leader, “I’m not a member of any organized political party; I’m a Democrat.”

Never have the homespun humorist’s words been put to more appropriate use than in Beshear’s reference to the Democratic disarray during this session.

As a result of that disarray, what should have been a two-on-one break became something a one-on-one-on-one-on-one game, with Beshear and a split House Democratic leadership doing the individual freelance thing not only against Senate Republicans but against each other as well.

The lack of teamwork by D’s made it easy for Senate President David Williams and his fellow Republicans to play effective defense against the Democrats’ agenda and even take the offensive on such issues as the budget.

So, where did it all go wrong for Democrats? How did a D governor coming off a landslide defeat of an R incumbent fail so miserably in his first legislative session?

Beshear himself must accept a big share of the blame. His ill-considered decision to take an active role in a no-win special election to fill Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo’s former Senate seat wound up stripping him of all the political capital he accumulated with his own election victory. The loss he suffered in the 30th District was a body blow that weakened him so badly he never recovered.

But that was hardly Beshear’s only mistake. For instance, he mishandled the whole casino gambling issue from the get-go.

As a gubernatorial candidate who made casino gambling the centerpiece of his platform, Beshear should have had a proposed constitutional amendment – preferably stating the issue as simply as possible – ready to introduce as House Bill 1 on the first day of the session.

Instead, he dilly-dallied for weeks before introducing an overly detailed amendment that immediately became the subject of derision.

Meanwhile, a special subcommittee created by House Speaker Jody Richards was draining any momentum from casino gambling by talking it to death in ways that confused the issue and took the focus away from a key arguments on its behalf: keeping Kentucky’s thoroughbred racing industry competitive.

Beshear made another mistake by proposing enabling legislation at the same time he proposed his amendment. Because that legislation included fairly specific locations for the proposed casinos, it generated opposition both from communities designated to get casinos and from communities that were left out of the picture.

While Beshear’s mishandling of the gambling issue was the most prominent example of his own contribution to his rocky relationship with the legislature, it wasn’t the only one. There were other instances, such as catching House Democratic leaders by surprise with a mid-session proposal for a 70-cent increase in the cigarette tax, when he hurt his own cause.

Still, not all of the blame goes to Beshear. The five members of House Democratic leaders deserve their share as well. On gambling in particular, they did few favors for their party’s governor. Their differences on the subject broke along lines reflecting a much deeper rift that had nothing to do with casino gambling. In that sense, casino gambling may have been a victim of their infighting over other issues.

More important, fallout from their feuding permeated the session, making it even less likely that a mistake-prone governor could be successful.