Meet the Man David Williams Wants to See Dead

It's better to be hated than ignored by Kentucky legislators, especially if your calling is protecting Kentucky citizens from corruption.

John Cheves at the Herald:

Richard Beliles sat in Gov. Steve Beshear's office foyer on a recent morning, staging his weekly protest of mountaintop-removal coal mining, when Senate President David Williams walked by and suggested that he kill himself.

"He said, 'Are you occupying the office?' I said yes. He said, 'Well, why don't you set yourself on fire? Why don't you immolate yourself?' And then he left," said Beliles, who is recovering from cancer treatment. "It was a strange thing for David to say. It sort of shook me up."

Through a spokeswoman, Williams later said he clearly was joking by suggesting the protest would be more effective with Beliles ablaze.

Beliles, who turns 78 on Tuesday, is a soft-spoken, genial man — and one of the more deeply resented figures at the Capitol.

He earned this animosity as chairman of the Kentucky chapter of Common Cause, a national advocacy group that describes its mission as "curbing the excessive influence of money on government and promoting fair elections." It's only one of his many causes (hence, his weekly coal-mining protests), but it's the one that most defines him.

For 22 years, without pay, Beliles has driven to Frankfort from his suburban Louisville home to lobby for stronger government ethics laws. He files ethics complaints, as he did to Williams in 2007 after the Republican senator sponsored a lunch where lobbyists were asked to help raise $50,000 in campaign funds in apparent violation of the law. (Williams said it was a mistake by his aides, and the complaint was dismissed). He is quoted as the scolding voice of integrity in news stories when politicians get caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

None of this has won him many friends in the crowd that runs state government.

Read the whole thing.