Dirty Ernie and the Seven Ponies - Part 2

(Read Part One)

Let's say you're a Kentucky Democratic voter. You're stomping your hooves for the chance to kick out Ernie Fletcher, who beat your man Chandler for the governorship in 2003. You're in the voting booth in the May primary, looking at the seven names listed as Democratic nominees for governor. You can't believe your eyes. One of them is Bruce Lunsford. The exact same Bruce Lunsford who dropped out of the democratic primary in 2003 because polls showed he was losing bad to Chandler. The same Bruce Lunsford who then turned around and ENDORSED Ernie Fletcher, the republican nominee and eventual winner. The same Bruce Lunsford every breathing Kentucky Democrat blames for Chandler's loss to Ernie.

So here's the question: How much money will it take to persuade you to vote for Bruce Lunsford?

If you answered "there is not enough money on earth or in heaven," congratulations! You just graduated from the How Not To Piss Off Voters You Will Need Later class Greg Stumbo flunked out of.

Stumbo is Lunsford's running mate, and opinion is about evenly divided as to whether Greg has taken complete leave of his senses or has a major trick up his sleeve that no one can figure out. Stumbo is currently Attorney General, and could have cruised to re-election. He could have made a credible run for governor on his own. Instead he attaches himself to a coward, turncoat and criminal whose name will be forever attached to one of the biggest corporate financial disasters in Kentucky history.

Opinion's leaning more to the "gone nuts" theory since Greg started threatening union leaders who refused to endorse Lunsford. It'd be funny if it weren't downright scary.

Jody Richards is the Speaker of the House who is running with John Y. Brown III, former Secretary of State and son of the former governor. Richards also lost to Chandler in the 2003 primary, but at least he had the guts to stick it out until the votes were counted. Richards apparently doesn't have a campaign website, but he does have a long record of swearing to House colleagues that he would not run for governor in 2007. Jody's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and doesn't exactly impress on the stump. He also doesn't seem to know what to do with a large Democratic majority. Mostly, he lets the Republican minority slap him around pretty good.

You want fun? You want guns? You want drugs? You want a candidate who shows up stoned to community meetings and talks about how stoned he is? Gatewood Galbraith is your man! I'm probably going to vote for him, if only because he'd be non-stop entertainment, of which Frankfort could use some. His running mate is Mark Wireman, an engineer from eastern Kentucky (to balance Gatewood being a Lexington lawyer) who just retired from the Transportation Cabinet. Nobody ever heard of Wireman before, but as the Transportation Cabinet was the Central Cesspool of Ernie's Merit Mess, we're all agog to hear what Mark might know.

Otis Hensley is an Eastern Kentucky demolition contractor who's running with the nickname "Bullman" and the promise to "run the Bull out of Frankfort." He's even got a picture on his home page of himself riding a giant statue of a bull. He got a grand total of 9,372 votes in the 2003 primary, but it hasn't given him a big head. His web site is actually pretty detailed on numerous policy issues. And it reads like it was written by a real person, as opposed to a campaign consultant - funny and self-deprecating but serious. His running mate's name is Richard Robbins. The Louisville Courier-Journal columnist Billy Reed handicaps Hensley's chances at "a zillion to one." That's not fair. There are fewer than two million voters in Kentucky.

Some of you political science majors out there may be wondering what happens if none of the above lovelies (including yesterday's three) gets a majority of the primary vote on May 22. Yes, Kentucky does have a runoff provision. If no candidate gets at least 40 percent of the primary vote, the top two vote-getters face each other in a runoff.

It hasn't been used since it was established in 1992, but it looks likely to get a workout this year. There's been a lot of talk during the General Assembly this year about repealing the runoff provision. The big problem is the millions of dollars that the individual counties will have to pay to set up a second election just 35 days after the first one. County Clerks, who run elections and will have to come up with the money, are dead-set against it and want the provision nixed. But the goo-goos object that it's not fair to eliminate the runoff this close to the primary, after candidates filed while perhaps counting on a runoff.

But runoffs are tricky. Just when you think not having a runoff is going to help you, you end up on election night a close second to someone you might have beaten in a runoff.

So members of the General Assembly are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, filing contradictory bills and changing sides, sure of nothing except they've got just a few days left to completely screw up the most wide-open election in Kentucky history.

And if that's not enough to turn you off Kentucky politics for life, you can get your fix at Pol Watchers and Bluegrass Report.