Do We Really Need A Governor?

Good Grief, this is a depressing primary season, and no, I'm not talking about the presidential race.

Here in Kentucky, the two Democrats topping the polls for the gubernatorial primary May 22 are the Traitor and the Crook.

Bruce Lunsford, a self-made millionaire who made his fortune by kicking poor old people out of his nursing homes and cheating thousands of investors out of their life savings, is running on the promise that he'll run Kentucky the way he ran his businesses.

God help us.

Lunsford's also claiming to be a "real Democrat" even though he dropped out of the 2003 primary to endorse the Republican nominee - now governor - Ernie Fletcher. He's spent the last four years giving tens of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates.

He's the Traitor, but he's leading the seven Democratic candidates with 20 percent in the most recent polling.

Tied with Lunsford at 20 percent in the polls is the Crook: former Lieutenant Governor Steve Henry, who is currently under investigation by a special prosecutor for playing fast and loose with campaign funds. Henry is married to a former Miss America, Heather French, and is an orthopedic surgeon who pleaded guilty a few years ago to playing fast and loose with Medicare reimbursements.

There are loyal Democrats in this state who will seriously vote for the Republican if either Henry or Lunsford wins the primary.

If they don't kill themselves first.

Another former Lieutenant Governor, Steve Beshear, is at 15 percent in the latest Survey USA poll. But he's getting pounded by Lunsford and others for his support, back in the '90s, of "payday lenders" who prey on poor working people who have no alternatives to paying 400 percent annual interest or more to get cash in advance of their paychecks.

State House Speaker Jody Richards is at 12 percent according to Survey USA, but he's in such bad financial straits he and his running mate, former Secretary of State John Y. Brown III, are reduced to begging their family members (scroll down to 7th graf) for money. Jody's been a no-show at candidate events lately, apparently recovering (or in hiding) from a legislative session that left the House Democrats looking even more feckless than usual. Oh, yeah, his campaign manager defected.

State Treasurer Jonathan Miller, Hope of the Progressives, is languishing at 8 percent. He's doing pretty well with fundraising, and has his third TV ad out, but his poll numbers have people writing him off five weeks before the election.

For pity's sake, Miller's tied with perennial candidate and professional maniac Gatewood Galbraith, who could actually take this primary if the predictions of record-breakingly low turnout are correct.

Listen: people live for politics in this state. In lots of places, you can't even get cable, and politics is the only entertainment. Yet five weeks before the primary, nobody's talking about the election. It's all the crummy spring weather and Don Imus.

It's going to come down to who can get their 14 loyal supporters up off their butts Tuesday morning and out to the polls.

If it rains on primary day, we might have a seven-way tie - three votes each.