I Wondered How Long Before Louisville Courier Journal HITS David Williams Again, This Time The Paper Wonders: "Is David Williams Running Out Of Time?"

Is David Williams running out of time?
Analysts say new ad might not be enough to make up ground
Written by Joseph Gerth

He trails by nearly 30 points in the polls. His fund-raising reports suggest he's low on campaign cash. A national group that at one time was helping push the Republican’s candidacy has instead turned its attention to a race in West Virginia.

And even as Senate President David Williams rolls out his first new campaign commercial in a month in his gubernatorial campaign against Democratic incumbent Steve Beshear, several political analysts are wondering if it's too little, too late.

“Anyone who has been around politics for any time knows that anything is possible,” said Republican political consultant Ted Jackson. “But with every passing day, it’s hard to see how he (Williams) can get competitive in this race … and it’s hard to see many ways he can reverse this.”

Two public polls released last week show that Beshear leads by 27 and 29 percentage points, and the Republican Governors Association has stopped running ads in Kentucky while it has moved into West Virginia, where the governor’s race is seen to be more competitive.

And Beshear has been airing positive ads almost nonstop while a Democratic political group has relentlessly attacked Williams for his spending and a plan to cut education funding.

Despite it all, Williams said recently that he’s pleased with the progress of the campaign, as he prepared for a fundraiser that was headlined by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

“We’ve been going around the state, we’ve got Jeb Bush in town ... so we feel very good about what’s happening,” he said.

Others aren’t so confident.

“I hesitate to declare things over, because a Democrat has to carefully navigate a state like Kentucky, but I think Beshear has most, if not all, of the advantages,” said Nathan Gonzalez, an editor with the nonpartisan Rothenburg Political Report in Washington, D.C.

Steve Voss, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky, said that the race could turn around for Williams, but it would take a large scandal in the Beshear administration or a deepening of the current economic troubles for him to make it happen.

“History shows that every once in a while, something like that happens,” Voss said. “But it’s not clear that there is anything David Williams could do to save the campaign at this point.”

All four public polls conducted since the May primary have put Beshear at least 20 points ahead of Williams. And each successive poll has shown Williams falling further behind.

Independent candidate Gatewood Galbraith is a distant third in the polls.

A Courier-Journal/WHAS11 Bluegrass Poll in July showed Beshear ahead by 24 points. A poll by Public Policy Polling released in the middle of last week found him ahead by 27 percentage points. And another poll by Insight Cable’s CN|2 released Friday showed Beshear leading by 29.

Beshear, who was unchallenged in the Democratic primary and able to save money for the general election, has been awash in cash. Williams, however, nearly emptied his campaign bank account during the primary, in which he faced a tougher-than-expected race against lesser-known tea party candidate Phil Moffitt.

Beshear had more than $3.2 million in his primary campaign account when he began shifting unused money into his general election fund. Williams, however, in the weeks following the primary, dropped below $90,000 in his campaign account.

The campaigns aren’t required to file their first general-election finance reports until Oct. 12.

Political experts say that in campaigns, polling and money are inextricably linked. Donors rarely give large sums to candidates who trail badly in polls.

The polls, said Jackson, “just start to affect everything: morale, fund-raising and grass-roots support.”

Beshear also has dominated the airwaves, with two months of positive ads, while Williams mustered a couple of weeks of commercials in which he talked about his relationship with his father and why he wants to be governor.

On Tuesday, Williams began his second ad in which he criticizes Beshear’s handling of the economy and accuses him of running a negative campaign. In the ad, Williams then says he has a plan to create jobs and says that he would oppose President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Voss said, however, that attacks on Obama won’t work as well in a gubernatorial race as they do in congressional contests.

Through much of July, the Republican Governors Association was running television spots to bolster Williams’ candidacy, but those ads have stopped. Mike Schrimpf, a spokesman for the RGA, refused to say why the group had stopped advertising or whether it would come back into Kentucky.

But four weeks ago, Kentucky Family Values, a Democratic group, began running TV commercials saying that Williams spent $17,000 in state money for a television in his office and favored cuts in state money going to public school students.

Little is known of the group other than its chairman is Russell Lloyd, a 41-year-old family law attorney in Louisville and the chairman of the Jefferson County Democratic Party’s 48th legislative district.

Its spokesman is Craig Varoga, a Washington-based Democratic activist who headed up the Bluegrass Freedom Fund, another political group that spent more than $3 million in 2007 accusing then-Gov. Ernie Fletcher, a Republican, of ethical lapses.

Lloyd said in an email that the group’s plan is to advocate for “economic policies that help Kentucky families — including, but not limited to, protecting our schools and providing more educational access to Kentucky’s young people, creating more jobs and boosting economic development, saving taxpayer dollars and improving ethics in government.”

Williams never responded to the ad.

“I don’t think they’re really saying anything to respond to,” Williams said in a recent interview. “I’m not going to be in the business of responding to every negative ad or mudslinging that comes up. They’re not going to dictate what our campaign says or what our campaign does.”

Williams’ failure to respond has prompted some, including Jackson, to believe that he hasn’t been able to replenish his campaign coffers following the primary.

“He is out of money,” said Jackson, who added that Williams now needs to figure out how to “shorten” the race by conserving his campaign funds now and spending them in an all-out rush during the final days of the campaign.

Gonzalez said if it was Williams’ strategy and not his lack of money that caused him to not to respond to the ads — either by addressing the accusations or trying to change the subject — it could well be the wrong one.

“We’ve seen leaving attacks unanswered can be lethal to a campaign,” he said.