Al Cross: "Courts, Ads Add Spark To Campaign." Yep, "Lacking" Spark, I'd Say!

Courts, ads add spark to campaign
Written by Al Cross

FRANKFORT, Ky. — The sleepy, disappointing governor’s race got its biggest dose of excitement yet last week, but it came from the courts and the candidates’ cohorts, not their campaigns. And some of the same stuff was going on in the lawyers’ race for attorney general, though not in court.

In a rare if not unprecedented event, a Frankfort judge, an arm of the state, told a political speaker to shut up. This was quite remarkable, because political speech enjoys the greatest protection from the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

But we live in a country where the Supreme Court has equated speech with money, a pernicious notion — but one mitigated by the fact that the court’s majority also thinks that if someone is speaking loudly about an election, the voters deserve to know who it is, to deter corruption or the appearance of corruption.

So, Franklin Circuit Judge Tom Wingate may have been justified in telling the shadowy group that calls itself Restore America that it had to reveal who was financing its TV commercials attacking Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear or the ads could not run, under state law. The Ohio-based outfit then reported that its sole donor was Terry Stephens, father-in-law of Republican challenger David Williams.

And Stephens may have been justified, too, in giving at least $1.3 million to Restoring America and $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which ran ads earlier. He is playing by rules federal courts have written, and doing to Beshear much the same that an expanded-gambling supporter did for Beshear in 2007, financing attack ads that kept a boot on the neck of scandal-hobbled Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher.

Absent scandal, incumbents usually have the advantage in raising money, so Stephens is also helping Williams overcome Beshear’s huge fundraising edge, illustrated by Finance Secretary Lori Flanery’s solicitation of Beshear campaign contributions with her state iPad and email account. There has been insufficient public outrage about this: the main contracting officer of state government seeking contributions for her boss, probably from people who stand to gain or lose at the hands of the state.

Terry Stephens knows about Kentucky politics. For most of the 1980s he was clerk of Russell County, where getting elected and staying elected are more practical and personal tasks than financial. He got out of politics and into business, and his company says it is the largest entirely American-owned manufacturer/distributor of fence products in the U.S. When his stepdaughter married Williams several years ago, he entered the upper levels of Kentucky’s political world, and now his money has made him one of its major players.

Restoring America has not bought ads for the last two weeks of the election, and there is talk that Stephens may ante up for another round, which makes you wonder what he knows that we don’t. The latest poll in the race, taken for cn|2 Oct. 17-19, after weeks of the Restoring America ads, had Beshear with a 28-point lead, about what he has posted for months.

Terry Stephens is an honorable man, and I believe him when he says he isn’t coordinating ad strategy with Williams, but I don’t think that means they can’t discuss private poll results. Do they think Beshear’s support is so thin and brittle that if they keep pecking away, it will crack?

Perhaps, but Stephens isn’t getting much bang for his buck, and some of the ads misfire. One says Beshear granted “partial pardons to at least eight convicted murderers and 14 rapists, allowing them to vote and even run for office.” The term “partial pardons” is an infrequently used term for restoration of civil rights, a standard practice for governors.

Another ad asks Beshear, “Kentucky lost nearly 100,000 jobs since you took office; have you done anything to stop it?” Beshear could say “yes” with some justification. Total employment in Kentucky has rebounded almost to the level it was when he took office, and the state unemployment rate is only a bit higher than the national rate. For most of his term, it was considerably higher.

Still, that flawed ad may be the best of the bunch, because it is built around Beshear’s refusal to give Williams more than a handful of joint appearances. After a series of questions to an empty chair behind a Beshear nameplate, it concludes, “Governor Beshear, your time is up.” That’s the sort of zinger Williams has needed.

The back-and-forth in the race for governor has obscured a near-mirror image in the attorney general’s race. Largely unknown supporters of Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway, hiding behind something called the Bluegrass Committee for Justice and Fairness, are financing a TV attack on Hopkins County Attorney Todd P’Pool, the Republican challenger, that plays fast and loose with the facts.

That ad has given P’Pool a premise to start an attack ad against Conway, recalling the attorney general’s disastrous “Aqua Buddha” ad in last fall’s Senate race with Republican Rand Paul and saying “Conway lies.” It’s Conway’s friends who are doing that, not Conway. Perhaps state law, like federal law, should require candidates to say “I approved this message” so voters can know immediately if the ad is from the campaign or not. In the Wild West that is now the world of campaign finance, we ought to be able to tell where the bullets are coming from while they’re still flying.

Al Cross, former Courier-Journal political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. His opinions are his own, not those of the university.