Matt Gunterman November 4th, 2007

Two more days until Democratic Christmas this year: Tuesday, November 6.

As for my election night plans, I plan on live-blogging the results via a map of Kentucky as I did back in the May primary. Most everyone with an internet connection can get the number results, but for the visual thinkers out there, I’ll lay out the geography of the results for both the gubernatorial race and secretary of state.

Al Cross (I), the kingpin of political journalism in Kentucky, offers us this week on the Sunday pages of the Courier-Journal his take on the dynamics of the present election and what they mean for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R).

In final days, not much hope remains for Fletcher

Kentuckians are about to vote in a most unusual election for governor.

The two campaigns are going full steam, as if the outcome will be decided in the final hours. Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell is on the radio in his hometown of Louisville, urging voters to re-elect Gov. Ernie Fletcher.

But all available polls suggest that Democrat Steve Beshear will hand Fletcher a crushing defeat, perhaps with a margin rivaling those of recent Democratic governors whose elections were, in the end, not fully contested: Julian Carroll, who won by 25.7 percent of the vote in 1975, and John Y. Brown Jr., who won by 26.3 in 1979. Heck, Beshear might even get near his old nemesis Wallace Wilkinson (29.6 in 1987) and his buddy Brereton Jones (29.5 in 1991), even though he is running against an incumbent governor who was elected by 10.1 percent, a record for a Republican in Kentucky.

[...]

This confounds those of us who thought the race would narrow as anti-Fletcher Republicans, such as those who voted for Anne Northup in the primary, came home to their party. They don’t appear to be moving. In The Courier-Journal’s latest Bluegrass Poll, GOP voters charted almost exactly the same as they did in September — 25 percent for Beshear and 9 percent undecided.

[...]

Another way Fletcher got elected was also unusual, if not unique. His predecessors got elected by building a political organization of their own; he had organizations handed to him by his Republican colleagues in the state’s congressional delegation. These organizations helped him get elected, but their primary loyalty remained elsewhere. So, when he got in trouble, he lacked a strong political network to guide and defend him.

The lack of organizational help was exemplified by the attitude of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the state Republican kingpin, who helped push Fletcher into the race. He put too much value on Fletcher’s track record of winning elections and seemed not to ask himself if Fletcher could manage the politically complex job of governor. (Fletcher, asked to explain why he almost ignored the huge crowd at his first Governor’s Derby Breakfast, said, “I have a hard time thinking politically.”)

When the scandal hit, McConnell treated Fletcher as if the Governor were radioactive. When Northup challenged Fletcher, McConnell called her a formidable candidate, but he didn’t follow up with the backing that Northup supporters expected. So, he managed to alienate two elements of his own party, just as he was starting what he has said will be his toughest campaign for re-election.

In the general election, McConnell has been complimentary of Fletcher and helped him raise money. That help, and his radio ads, may help assuage some Fletcherites, but 1995 gubernatorial nominee Larry Forgy keeps railing against the senator and may challenge him next year — a quixotic exercise but one that could cause more damage.

The last big Republican kingpin was Louie Nunn, governor from 1967-71. He ran for the Senate in 1972, when Richard Nixon was carrying Kentucky by more than 300,000 votes, but lost to little-known Democrat Dee Huddleston by 35,000. The usual reason cited is Nunn’s sales-tax increase, but the scales may have been tipped by Republican defections in the old 5th Congressional District, where his administration had problems keeping patronage-oriented Republicans happy, and in Jefferson County, where scars remained from his bloody 1967 primary battle with County Judge Marlow Cook.

Louie Nunn never fully healed those scars, and they cost him. Next year, McConnell is a much stronger bet than Nunn was, but he has suffered fresh scars lately, and Democrats smell blood.

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One of the more interesting passages above is Cross’s statement that it confounded conventional wisdom in Kentucky that Republicans didn’t unite around Fletcher in the end. Many people expect that McConnell will have a far easier time reuniting his base despite its splintering in this 2007 gubernatorial race. The problem with that scenario is that it doesn’t recognize how dissatisfied even Republicans are with the status quo of their party. Yes, there is that core of the party that’s marching alongside McConnell and Pres. George W. Bush over the impending political cliff like a bunch of lemmings, but there’s also a sizable portion that wants a new direction.

It’s true that this phenomenon is far more discernible on a national level than in Kentucky because Kentucky Republicans tend not to be the brightest bulbs or outside-the-box thinkers. Yet, when you combine the KY GOP faction that will be clamoring for change and views McConnell as an obstruction to that change (however small that group is) with the Forgy/Fletcher that will stop at nothing to tear McConnell down, then you have a formidable opposition.

Enough to defeat McConnell in a primary? Almost assuredly not. Enough to help Democrats defeat him in the general election. You bet.

• Al Cross , Gubernatorial race '07 , Kentucky GOP , Mitch McConnell , Republican Party Decline
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