Al Smith: Democrat, Pete Mahurin Of Bowling Green, Makes Case For Democrats -- And Barack Obama.

Read more here, and the story below:

In addition to the usual personal fireworks between candidates of opposing parties, next Saturday's speeches at the fabled Fancy Farm picnic should include an amplified attack by Democrats on President Bush's economic policies.
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That's the advice of my longtime friend Pete Mahurin of Bowling Green who grew up poor on Short Creek in Grayson Country and then worked his way up to chairman of Hilliard-Lyons Financial Services without ever leaving his base in rural Kentucky.. He wonders why so many Democrats fall silent when Republicans say they are the party of "tax-and-spend liberals."

Mahurin, whose business success has not separated him from his loyalties to the Democratic Party nor kept his views a secret from conservative customers, says Democrats "need to stop playing defense and go on the attack about the economy." Nationally, the ideal messenger, he thinks, is the Nebraska investment guru Warren Buffett, like Mahurin a supporter of Barack Obama for president.

Pete called me recently after a client predicted that the stock market and the economy "will really go to hell" if Obama wins.

No, the problem has been the Republicans who accepted the "borrow-and-spend" policies of George W. Bush and the Democrats who let them get away with it, he said he told his client.

"The question is, 'How large do you want the deficit to be?' I insisted that the Bush deficit had weakened our dollar, our economy, raised the price of oil and was causing the sale of our country to foreign interests."

The next week, Mahurin flew to Chicago for an Obama fund-raiser, sharing a table with Buffett himself whose speech was the main draw. Buffett also attacked the deficit, mocking Republicans who fear estate taxes ("paid in only one of every 200 deaths") and who grumble that taxes discourage incentive. In his storied career managing money, Buffett told Pete, no one has ever pleaded, "Don't make me any more because taxes are high."

"I laugh when people think one has to be a Republican to succeed in business," Pete said. How he succeeded as a Democrat who became a confidante of notable business leaders like Bill Gatton, for whom the University of Kentucky business school is named, Owsley Brown II of Louisville and Jim Gray of Lexington, is an intriguing story.

When we met 40 years ago he had quit teaching high school physics to be a fledgling stock broker. Not a stereotypical slick salesman then, nor now, he is slow talking, behind a toothy smile, and continues to drive a beat-up car. In the old days, he didn't play golf or belong to a country club, and his wife Dixie bought his suits off the rack.

For many years the leading salesman at Hilliard-Lyons, which has a force of 1,000 in eight states, he was named chairman after Houchens Industries of Bowling Green became the largest stockholder -- a deal in which he helped return the venerable company to Kentucky control. Along the way, Mahurin acquired six rural banks for his own account. When we first met, he was pitching a courthouse bond issue to Logan County officials by visting their farms at sunset milking time. I was a weekly editor in Russellville whom he helped to buy a paper in Leitchfield.

Mahurin, 68, thinks Kentuckians have been "brain washed" into believing they are "too conservative" to support national Democrats. If he were speaking at Fancy Farm Saturday, he says he would tell a history lesson from his own life about "a great party called capitalism. The Republicans in general want only a selected few invited -- like the George Bushes of the world who, as Ann Richards said, were born on third base and thought they hit a triple.

"I consider the Democrats still a party of hope and opportunity. I was poor on a farm, but Democratic programs enabled me to slip in the side door, or kick in the back door, and attend this great party called capitalism. Today, my family and I can walk into the front door anywhere in the country."

Should Obama win, the politicians who are afraid to say much for him at Fancy Farm may not fare so well, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of those front doors that open to Pete Mahurin, the capitalist from Short Creek, will be at the White House.

Al Smith, whose newspaper company was based in western Kentucky, is writing a memoir. He retired last year as host of KET's Comment on Kentucky.