In Kentucky, Al Cross Sees Visions Of A "Slam-Dunk Ticket For Kentucky Governor For David Williams [And Richie Farmer]".
Slam-dunk ticket for Kentucky governor looks likely for David Williams
By Al Cross
As the Kentucky Country Ham Breakfast broke up at the State Fair Thursday morning, a man told state Senate President David Williams that he was ready to help him start raising money for Williams' all-but-announced Republican campaign for governor next year.
“It won't be long,” Williams replied, in the confident tone of a man who has obtained the key to a door that could lead to the state's highest office and the ouster of Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear.
Barring any 11th-hour misgivings, Williams appears to have persuaded Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer to run for lieutenant governor on his slate. He needed Farmer in order to make an early announcement, which now seems to be forthcoming.
Farmer, who was elected in 2003 largely on his University of Kentucky basketball fame, gave reporters a head fake at the breakfast, telling them he still might run for governor. But maybe he was thinking about 2015, if the Williams-Farmer slate loses, or in 2019, if it wins and is re-elected. Williams said the pair would make a statement about a deal “in the next few days.”
Ever since the notion of such a slate became public, many have asked why Farmer, who is not ready to be governor but would be a strong bet in a race for secretary of state, would tie his political future to the fate of Williams — who has loads of political baggage from his sometimes-nasty clashes with Democrats in his 10-plus years as Senate president.
But that baggage is the big reason that Williams, who is widely seen a sourpuss, needs the popular Farmer to bring sugar to the slate and make lemonade out of a lemon. And it is likely to be a potent potable.
Louisville businessman Phil Moffett and state Rep. Mike Harmon of Boyle County are running for the Republican nomination, but most Republicans seem to think that a Williams-Farmer slate is their only hope of defeating Beshear and his new running mate, Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson.
There has been talk that Farmer may have received assurances, from people in positions to deliver on them, that if the slate loses they will find him a place to land and remain prominent until it's time to suit up for the 2015 elections. He told reporters Thursday that he has received no such promises.
In a slate arrangement, the risk of losing rests primarily on the candidate for governor. State House Minority Leader Jeff Hoover lost little if any political capital by joining former U.S. Rep. Anne Northup's ineffective challenge to then-Gov. Ernie Fletcher in the 2007 Republican primary. Farmer lacks Hoover's gubernatorial qualifications, so he will be subject to more scrutiny than the usual running mate, but his main task will be to avoid gaffes that make him look unqualified to be governor-in-waiting.
And what if Williams makes mistakes that doom the slate? In that case, Farmer would be somewhat insulated because he already has a statewide following, as can be seen at any boys' state basketball tournament. Unlike most slated candidates for lieutenant governor, his political future will remain largely in his own hands. (But he needs to start giving better speeches than the one he gave at the Ham Breakfast.)
Farmer's apparent decision may have also been driven by the political winds in Kentucky, which are increasingly blowing Republicans' way. The latest Insight cn|2 poll, taken by Braun Research Aug. 16-18, found that a clear majority of Kentucky adults said they were conservative.
A cn|2 poll last month gave Beshear a 69 percent job-approval rating, but a Rasmussen Reports poll at about the same time had it at 54 percent. That is still good for a Kentucky incumbent in the party of Barack Obama, but Williams says his polling shows that Beshear's support is soft and many voters are persuadable. Last month he released a memo from his pollster saying a survey showed him and Farmer running only 1 percentage point behind Beshear and Abramson.
As for Williams' political baggage, he says, “Any negatives I have are not among Republican-leaning voters. Obviously, the country is trending Republican.… I think I can win because Steve Beshear is weak. He is indecisive, he has no agenda, he doesn't work well with the legislature.” But if those charges are true, they don't seem to have had much effect on voters.
Williams' unpopularity seems to have been centered in Jefferson County. He did something last week that could bring conservative Democrats and some moderates in the county his way, co-sponsoring a bill with Sen. Dan Seum, R-Louisville, that would generally give parents the right to enroll their children in the school closest to their home.
The move will surely make Williams all the more objectionable to more liberal voters, but most of them would never be in his corner anyway, and he has a statewide education issue to talk about: Kentucky's failure to get money in the federal Race to the Top competition because it does not allow charter schools. He blames that on Beshear's failure to get House Democrats to accept the idea.
A Williams-Beshear battle would be a dandy, unlike the last two races, in which scandals skewed the results, and the one in 1999, which was essentially uncontested. Both men have been winners and losers who have learned from their losses, and are lawyers with long records on issues and the skill to debate them, with the first big arena the 2011 legislative session. (Don't bet on much getting done then.)
Abramson, also a lawyer by trade, can talk rings around Farmer, as he showed at the Ham Breakfast, but they are likely to have few debates. Beshear may be tempted to argue that he has the only fully qualified slate, but he had better wait for Farmer to provide more evidence. Eighteen years after he was one of UK's “Unforgettables,” Farmer remains so, and the public will probably give him plenty of time to prove that he can, in both political and basketball parlance, “move up to the next level.”
Al Cross, former Courier-Journal political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. His e-mail address is al.cross@uky.edu. His views are his own, not those of the University of Kentucky.
By Al Cross
As the Kentucky Country Ham Breakfast broke up at the State Fair Thursday morning, a man told state Senate President David Williams that he was ready to help him start raising money for Williams' all-but-announced Republican campaign for governor next year.
“It won't be long,” Williams replied, in the confident tone of a man who has obtained the key to a door that could lead to the state's highest office and the ouster of Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear.
Barring any 11th-hour misgivings, Williams appears to have persuaded Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer to run for lieutenant governor on his slate. He needed Farmer in order to make an early announcement, which now seems to be forthcoming.
Farmer, who was elected in 2003 largely on his University of Kentucky basketball fame, gave reporters a head fake at the breakfast, telling them he still might run for governor. But maybe he was thinking about 2015, if the Williams-Farmer slate loses, or in 2019, if it wins and is re-elected. Williams said the pair would make a statement about a deal “in the next few days.”
Ever since the notion of such a slate became public, many have asked why Farmer, who is not ready to be governor but would be a strong bet in a race for secretary of state, would tie his political future to the fate of Williams — who has loads of political baggage from his sometimes-nasty clashes with Democrats in his 10-plus years as Senate president.
But that baggage is the big reason that Williams, who is widely seen a sourpuss, needs the popular Farmer to bring sugar to the slate and make lemonade out of a lemon. And it is likely to be a potent potable.
Louisville businessman Phil Moffett and state Rep. Mike Harmon of Boyle County are running for the Republican nomination, but most Republicans seem to think that a Williams-Farmer slate is their only hope of defeating Beshear and his new running mate, Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson.
There has been talk that Farmer may have received assurances, from people in positions to deliver on them, that if the slate loses they will find him a place to land and remain prominent until it's time to suit up for the 2015 elections. He told reporters Thursday that he has received no such promises.
In a slate arrangement, the risk of losing rests primarily on the candidate for governor. State House Minority Leader Jeff Hoover lost little if any political capital by joining former U.S. Rep. Anne Northup's ineffective challenge to then-Gov. Ernie Fletcher in the 2007 Republican primary. Farmer lacks Hoover's gubernatorial qualifications, so he will be subject to more scrutiny than the usual running mate, but his main task will be to avoid gaffes that make him look unqualified to be governor-in-waiting.
And what if Williams makes mistakes that doom the slate? In that case, Farmer would be somewhat insulated because he already has a statewide following, as can be seen at any boys' state basketball tournament. Unlike most slated candidates for lieutenant governor, his political future will remain largely in his own hands. (But he needs to start giving better speeches than the one he gave at the Ham Breakfast.)
Farmer's apparent decision may have also been driven by the political winds in Kentucky, which are increasingly blowing Republicans' way. The latest Insight cn|2 poll, taken by Braun Research Aug. 16-18, found that a clear majority of Kentucky adults said they were conservative.
A cn|2 poll last month gave Beshear a 69 percent job-approval rating, but a Rasmussen Reports poll at about the same time had it at 54 percent. That is still good for a Kentucky incumbent in the party of Barack Obama, but Williams says his polling shows that Beshear's support is soft and many voters are persuadable. Last month he released a memo from his pollster saying a survey showed him and Farmer running only 1 percentage point behind Beshear and Abramson.
As for Williams' political baggage, he says, “Any negatives I have are not among Republican-leaning voters. Obviously, the country is trending Republican.… I think I can win because Steve Beshear is weak. He is indecisive, he has no agenda, he doesn't work well with the legislature.” But if those charges are true, they don't seem to have had much effect on voters.
Williams' unpopularity seems to have been centered in Jefferson County. He did something last week that could bring conservative Democrats and some moderates in the county his way, co-sponsoring a bill with Sen. Dan Seum, R-Louisville, that would generally give parents the right to enroll their children in the school closest to their home.
The move will surely make Williams all the more objectionable to more liberal voters, but most of them would never be in his corner anyway, and he has a statewide education issue to talk about: Kentucky's failure to get money in the federal Race to the Top competition because it does not allow charter schools. He blames that on Beshear's failure to get House Democrats to accept the idea.
A Williams-Beshear battle would be a dandy, unlike the last two races, in which scandals skewed the results, and the one in 1999, which was essentially uncontested. Both men have been winners and losers who have learned from their losses, and are lawyers with long records on issues and the skill to debate them, with the first big arena the 2011 legislative session. (Don't bet on much getting done then.)
Abramson, also a lawyer by trade, can talk rings around Farmer, as he showed at the Ham Breakfast, but they are likely to have few debates. Beshear may be tempted to argue that he has the only fully qualified slate, but he had better wait for Farmer to provide more evidence. Eighteen years after he was one of UK's “Unforgettables,” Farmer remains so, and the public will probably give him plenty of time to prove that he can, in both political and basketball parlance, “move up to the next level.”
Al Cross, former Courier-Journal political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. His e-mail address is al.cross@uky.edu. His views are his own, not those of the University of Kentucky.
Labels: General information
posted by KYJurisDoctor at 5:55 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home