Governor Steve Beshear Had Dealings With Leonard Lawson. Read My Comments.

Read more from Tom Loftus, or check out below:

Beshear discusses dealings with Lawson
Highway contractor didn't give to campaign

By Tom Loftus

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- Gov. Steve Beshear said yesterday that he asked highway contractor Leonard Lawson for his support during the 2007 governor's race.
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But Beshear said he didn't think Lawson gave him a contribution.

"I had a conversation with Leonard Lawson urging him to be for us," Beshear told reporters yesterday. "I talked with other road contractors, I talked to everybody under the sun trying to make sure they supported us."

Lawson, of Lexington, has been a major political contributor in Kentucky for more than two decades.

Records of the Registry of Election Finance show that he and his family contributed $4,000 to Gov. Ernie Fletcher's campaign during the Republican primary, though they made no contributions to either Beshear, a Democrat, or Fletcher in the general election.

Individuals affiliated with Lawson companies gave to both candidates -- more to Fletcher than to Beshear.

For example, people connected to one of the Lawson family's companies, Gaddie-Shamrock LLC of Columbia, gave $25,000 to Fletcher in the primary and $24,000 in the general election, according to a Courier-Journal analysis of campaign-finance reports. They gave $13,000 to Beshear in the general election.

Lawson's name has surfaced in connection with a federal investigation of contracting procedures during the Fletcher administration.

An affidavit by an FBI agent, filed in federal court last week, states that Lawson paid $20,000 cash to former Transportation Cabinet official James Rummage for confidential bid information in 2006 and 2007.

The affidavit alleged that former Transportation Secretary Bill Nighbert also was involved in leaking confidential information to Lawson.

Attorneys for Lawson and Nighbert have said their clients did nothing wrong, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Taylor has declined to comment.

No one has been charged in connection with the investigation.

Beshear said yesterday that "our Transportation Cabinet and our entire government have been cooperating and continue to cooperate with the federal authorities into this investigation into past practices in the prior administration's Transportation Cabinet."

He added: "I think it's certainly apparent that there's been a culture of corruption surrounding the Transportation Cabinet in the past. We are determined to turn that culture of corruption into a culture of integrity."

Beshear said that, for now, his administration will continue to deal with Lawson, who with his family owns interests in companies that bid to do state work in Central and south-central Kentucky.

"I think you have to let the judicial process run its course. But obviously there are serious allegations that will be dealt with as we go along from a civil standpoint as well as a criminal one," Beshear said.

About a month ago, investigators briefed him on the investigation's status.

He said, like current Transportation Secretary Joe Prather, that he was asked if he had ever learned any information from conversations with Nighbert. He said he had not.

Reporter Tom Loftus can be reached at (502) 875-5136.

Editor's comment: It may be time for the Governor to give back money he received from "people connected to one of the Lawson family's companies, Gaddie-Shamrock LLC of Columbia [who] gave $13,000 to Beshear in the general election," in order to ENSURE that the public believes that the Governor is "DETERMINED to turn that culture of corruption into a culture of integrity."

That's my two cents.