"GOP Win Has Impact In Frankfort And Beyond".
GOP win has impact in Frankfort and beyond
By Jospeph Gerth
After Democrat Jodie Haydon’s drubbing in last week’s special election for a state Senate seat, you can bet one thing: Gov. Steve Beshear won’t be manufacturing any more special elections in the near future.
Sen. Ken Winters, R-Murray, won’t be replacing Helen Mountjoy as secretary of the state Education and Workforce Development Cabinet. Sen. Tom Buford, R-Nicholasville, won’t be taking an administration job either.
Pick your Republican. Pick your job.
It ain’t happening.
Beshear created the last two vacancies in the GOP-controlled Senate by appointing Republicans to lucrative government posts. Democrats won the first seat in Eastern Kentucky, but they lost badly last week in Central Kentucky when Republican Rep. Jimmy Higdon whipped Haydon by 12 percentage points.
There’s a lot of anger toward the Democrats out there right now.
Anger about what’s going on in Washington. Anger about the Beshear administration and its inability to get things done in a tough economic climate.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., claims it has everything to do with the health care debate in Washington, the federal deficit and everything else that he and other GOP leaders have been talking about it.
There’s probably some truth to that, but there’s also a healthy amount of spin.
Not long after Haydon’s fate became apparent, McConnell called reporters to play up the national angle. Higdon and his fellow Republicans used national issues in much of his advertising.
“This Senate race has national implications,” were the first words out of his mouth. “It’s going to be talked about not just in Kentucky but up here (in Washington) as well for that very reason.”
It’s no coincidence that, by Thursday morning, there was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, and Rush Limbaugh was talking on the radio about the national implications of the race.
But that oversimplifies things.
Higdon won in part because he is well-liked in the district and his voters went to the polls.
In a race that saw 24 percent of the 14th District’s registered voters cast ballots, the folks who knew Higdon best (those in his home county of Marion) voted at a 34 percent clip. And despite being overwhelmingly Democratic, they voted for Higdon by a 2-1 margin.
Those in both the Higdon and Haydon camps say the role of Kentucky Right to Life, which ran ads questioning Haydon’s credentials as a “pro-life” candidate, shouldn’t be underestimated in the state’s most Catholic district. It includes Bardstown, the cradle of Catholicism in Kentucky.
But the question isn’t what happened Tuesday. It’s what Beshear does next in his quest to take control of the state Senate and to pass some form of expanded gambling — which is what this whole exercise was about, wasn’t it?
And there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer for him.
Haydon backed slot machines at race tracks and Higdon softened his opposition to expanded gambling, saying that he would support allowing voters to decide the issue by way of a constitutional amendment.
But it’s doubtful that an amendment, if it passes, would produce any increased state revenue from gambling during Beshear’s first (and maybe only) term. And that’s not what the horse industry wants anyway.
But the governor and the horse industry still have hopes that expanded gambling can win approval without a constitutional amendment, which would give Beshear hundreds of millions of dollars to spend just before his re-election campaign.
All they have to do is show the state Senate how bad the state’s budget is and how education and state police will need to be cut without it.
Care to bet?
By Jospeph Gerth
After Democrat Jodie Haydon’s drubbing in last week’s special election for a state Senate seat, you can bet one thing: Gov. Steve Beshear won’t be manufacturing any more special elections in the near future.
Sen. Ken Winters, R-Murray, won’t be replacing Helen Mountjoy as secretary of the state Education and Workforce Development Cabinet. Sen. Tom Buford, R-Nicholasville, won’t be taking an administration job either.
Pick your Republican. Pick your job.
It ain’t happening.
Beshear created the last two vacancies in the GOP-controlled Senate by appointing Republicans to lucrative government posts. Democrats won the first seat in Eastern Kentucky, but they lost badly last week in Central Kentucky when Republican Rep. Jimmy Higdon whipped Haydon by 12 percentage points.
There’s a lot of anger toward the Democrats out there right now.
Anger about what’s going on in Washington. Anger about the Beshear administration and its inability to get things done in a tough economic climate.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., claims it has everything to do with the health care debate in Washington, the federal deficit and everything else that he and other GOP leaders have been talking about it.
There’s probably some truth to that, but there’s also a healthy amount of spin.
Not long after Haydon’s fate became apparent, McConnell called reporters to play up the national angle. Higdon and his fellow Republicans used national issues in much of his advertising.
“This Senate race has national implications,” were the first words out of his mouth. “It’s going to be talked about not just in Kentucky but up here (in Washington) as well for that very reason.”
It’s no coincidence that, by Thursday morning, there was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, and Rush Limbaugh was talking on the radio about the national implications of the race.
But that oversimplifies things.
Higdon won in part because he is well-liked in the district and his voters went to the polls.
In a race that saw 24 percent of the 14th District’s registered voters cast ballots, the folks who knew Higdon best (those in his home county of Marion) voted at a 34 percent clip. And despite being overwhelmingly Democratic, they voted for Higdon by a 2-1 margin.
Those in both the Higdon and Haydon camps say the role of Kentucky Right to Life, which ran ads questioning Haydon’s credentials as a “pro-life” candidate, shouldn’t be underestimated in the state’s most Catholic district. It includes Bardstown, the cradle of Catholicism in Kentucky.
But the question isn’t what happened Tuesday. It’s what Beshear does next in his quest to take control of the state Senate and to pass some form of expanded gambling — which is what this whole exercise was about, wasn’t it?
And there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer for him.
Haydon backed slot machines at race tracks and Higdon softened his opposition to expanded gambling, saying that he would support allowing voters to decide the issue by way of a constitutional amendment.
But it’s doubtful that an amendment, if it passes, would produce any increased state revenue from gambling during Beshear’s first (and maybe only) term. And that’s not what the horse industry wants anyway.
But the governor and the horse industry still have hopes that expanded gambling can win approval without a constitutional amendment, which would give Beshear hundreds of millions of dollars to spend just before his re-election campaign.
All they have to do is show the state Senate how bad the state’s budget is and how education and state police will need to be cut without it.
Care to bet?
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posted by KYJurisDoctor at 8:08 AM
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