I Love Smell of Roasting Repug Candidacy

Hal Heiner was going to beat him anyway, but wow, what a way to go down in flames two weeks before the primary.

The Republican primary for governor turned toxic Monday night as a woman publicly accused James Comer of physical abuse in 1991 and Comer's running mate assailed Hal Heiner's campaign for its contact with a blogger who had been posting about the alleged assault for months.

Comer on Monday night denied the allegation of abuse in an interview with the Herald-Leader, saying he would hold a press conference on Tuesday "to prove this is the worst political dirty trick in Kentucky history."

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/05/05/3836588/gop-race-for-governor-turns-toxic.html#storylink=cpy

Oh, honey, it gets so much better. Seems the woman claims Comer accompanied her on a trip to a Louisville abortion clinic in 1991.  When abortion was, as it is now, 100 percent completely legal in Kentucky and throughout the entire United States.

Not that repug primary voters will forgive even a whisper of the A-word coming within 10 miles of a candidate.

Even if it's all a lie, just the accusations are enough to sink him in the primary.  If they'd come out after he'd won the primary, repug voters would rally around him to beat the Democrat.  But they've got three repug alternatives to the guy who's already labeled - justifiably or not - as the abortion candidate.

Kudos to Comer for apparently avoiding any mention of his invisible sky wizard, although that, too, will be held against him by the freakazoids who turn out in droves for repug primaries.

Comer's wife was at his side during today's press conference, confidently insisting that her husband was innocence incarnate. Not that she has any actual exculpatory evidence, you understand.

Stop doing that, spouses of accused candidates.  It just reminds everyone of Mrs. David Vitter.

KY Dem Party Still Doesn't Know How to Run Campaigns

For the eleventy-millionth time, there are no swing voters who can be persuaded to cross party lines.  There are only occasional voters in both parties who have to be inspired or bullied into getting off their fat asses and into the voting booth.

This stupid shit just pisses people off and subtracts thousands more Democratic votes from the total number any Democratic candidate needs to win statewide.

Unless the state Democratic Party starts knocking on doors and talking directly to Democratic voters, begging them to go to the polls, we're going to get Governor Heiner and the Democratic party will have no one to blame but itself.

Sam Youngman at the Herald:

It has become conventional wisdom in the 2015 race for governor that one of Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway's greatest assets is the contentious Republican primary.

Highlighting that asset, the Kentucky Democratic Party released a new web video, titled "Slugfest," on Tuesday that demonstrates the heated turn the Republican field has taken in the last few weeks.

The state party said in a news release that the video shows "how the GOP primary has turned into a brutal, intra-party fight that is exposing the flaws in each candidate and will leave their ultimate nominee deeply wounded."

Gee, that sounds familiar ... oh yeah.  That's what the repugs said about Clinton and Obama in 2008.  I wonder how that turned out.

"the GOP primary has turned into a brutal, intra-party fight that is exposing the flaws in each candidate and will leave their ultimate nominee deeply wounded will force the candidates to hone their arguments and leave the eventual nominee enormously strengthened."

FIFY. 

Why Vote?

Kentucky's primary election is May 19th.  The Secretary of State is predicting nine percent turnout.

For the gubernatorial race.  Plus Secretary of State, Auditor and Attorney General. The election that will have far more immediate effect on the lives of Kentuckians than the presidential or congressional races.

Nine percent. 

via Undercover Blue at hullaballoo:

A quote from former Colorado Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon (D-Denver) expresses it better:

“We think that voting actually is not just a private vote for the person who gets the vote, but a public good, and that the more people who vote, the more legitimate the elected officials are, and that they represent the actual values of the electorate.”

KY Repug Gov Candidates Caught Lying About Jobs

Of course they are lying; they are repugs and their mouths are moving.  The news here is that they were caught and statewide media considered it newsworthy.

Sam Youngman at the Herald:

Last week, Gov. Steve Beshear and a state economist took Republican gubernatorial candidate Hal Heiner to task for saying that Kentucky had lost 20,000 jobs over the last two years.

Since then, Commissioner of Agriculture James Comer's claim that Kentucky had lost 50,000 jobs had disappeared from his campaign website.

"Kentuckians are frustrated at the lack of good-paying jobs in Kentucky," the website said last week. "In fact, Kentucky has lost nearly 50,000 jobs over the last two years."

On Monday morning, the second sentence was gone.

Edwin King, director of Comer's campaign for governor, said Monday that the claim should have specified that 50,000 Kentuckians had dropped out of the labor force, which is why Beshear and his folks took issue with Heiner's numbers.

King said the campaign was making some "cosmetic" adjustments to the site.

Looking at labor force participation does not tell the whole story, according to Beshear and his team, who say that other stats show an increase in jobs over the past two years. In essence, there are more jobs but fewer people working in them as an increasing percentage of the population retires, goes back to school or is disabled, according to the state.

I'm going to change my election prediction for the gubernatorial race: it's still going to be a repug, but Heiner instead of Comer. Not that Jack Conway could beat either of them, or even Matt Bevins, but Heiner's Louisville ties are going to crush Conway before the polls even close in Western Kentucky.