Standing by their Men

In the Race for No. 1, the No. 2’s may be More Interesting

Ruby Laffoon was born to a staunchly Democratic family in Madisonville, Ky. He was the state’s leader from 1931-35, years which saw deadly turmoil in the coal fields of eastern Kentucky, tumult which he generally ignored although beseeched for humane concessions by beleaguered miners.

His governorship did have its noteworthy moments.

He watched Adolph Rupp’s UK Wildcats defeat Duke 37-30 on Feb. 6, 1932. It was Gov. Ruby’s first official visit to the University of Kentucky Gymnasium. He was responsible for the erection of the War Mother’s Memorial Bridge, the second span to cross the Kentucky River in the state capital. He proposed a state sales tax. He made the Order of Kentucky Colonels an “Honorable” organization, trumping that in 1935 when he bestowed a colonelship on a chef named Harland Sanders. In fact, Laffoon issued a record number of colonelships — as well as a record number of governor’s pardons.

For such accomplishments in the statehouse, Ruby Laffoon has a room named for him at the Galt House. The hotel’s builder, Al Schneider, must have been a political buff. How else to explain the presence of numerous meeting rooms named for former Kentucky governors?

There’s the Wetherby Room (Gov. Lawrence W., 1950-55), the Clements Room (Gov. Earle C., 1947-50) and the Nunn Room (Gov. Louie B., 1967-71). There are real old-timers and first-timers, too. There’s a McCreary Room (Gov. James B., 1875-79, 1911-15) and a Collins Room (Gov. Martha Layne, 1983-87).

The list goes on, although one wonders why Wendell H. Ford (1971-74) and Julian M. Carroll (1974-79) must share a room (Carroll-Ford), as do Bert T. Combs (1959-63) and A.B. “Happy” Chandler (1935-39, 1955-59), while 20 other ex-govs have their own individual spaces? Even Wally G. Wilkinson (1987-91).

Which brings us to the guys who really want to sleep where Ruby Laffoon slept — Donkey Ben Chandler and Elephant Ernie Fletcher. Each would also like to see a Galt House room named after himself someday. As, for that matter, would their running mates, Republican Steve Pence and Democrat Charlie Owen. (Seeing how Louisville’s signature downtown hotel complex is undergoing serious, long-needed renovation, don’t new rooms deserve new names? Not to mention that the twosome topping the respective tickets, and their running mates, have spent enough time campaigning at the Galt House this election year to qualify for comped suites come Thunder time.)

It is mid-August, and the long-running road extravaganza that is the Ben and Ernie Dog & Pony Show is playing a gig in the Galt House’s Grand Ballroom (no ex-governor’s name big enough for that 30,000-square-foot monster). The candidates are debating during the Department for Local Government’s Local Issues Conference.

It is obvious at this early campaign performance that the stars have rehearsed. They deliver their lines by rote, while displaying an admirable deference to one another.

This August morning there is one harbinger of the peckish behavior that now pervades this election like a pall. The hotel’s garish halls are jammed, not only with dressed up conference attendees — a gaggle of local bureaucrats from around the state — but also with generally well-behaved political supporters on both sides.

Then there are the Camo Boys. The guys from Local 64 wear mottled green camouflage T-shirts that read: “God Bless Union Carpenters — America Needs ’Em.” Ready for political warfare, the guerrillas carry placards like punji stakes. Conference-goers eye the group warily.

For good reason. The Camo Boys are in a rude mood. Their allegiance is obvious. When Elephant Ernie turns the corner, heading toward the biggest ballroom in the burg, the Camo Boys’ invective spews.

“Booooooooooooo!”

“Fletcher, you’re a bad man.”

“Who says he’s a man?”

Several prim ladies, fearful looks in their eyes, blanch.

Now, two months later, as the campaign grinds to conclusion during its final mortar and pestle stage, the comity Ben and Ernie displayed that August morning is giving way to the testiness foreshadowed by the Camo Boys. The show has played enough stops that Ben and Ernie have memorized each other’s lines. They cue one another’s taunts like George and Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Three weeks after the top dogs’ August performance, Steve & Charlie’s Traveling Review plays the Galt House. As it turns out, the No. 2 guys are perhaps more interesting than those at the top, who get most of the ink. Nobody’s paying much attention to Steve and Charlie, but each is worth examining.

This Galt House gig is the first of two performances by the lieutenant governor candidates at Greater Louisville’s political venue of choice. This mano a mano plays the smaller Carroll-Ford Room during the Kentucky Council on Crime and Delinquency’s annual meeting. A few politicos are present, including Lisa Chapman, who is there to videotape the proceedings for Steve. She’s a GOP “volunteer,” on leave from her job with a “governmental relations” firm that lobbies Frankfort on behalf of Realtors and LG&E, among others.

During the relatively subdued affair, the adversaries actually address matters of relevance to the conclave, such as fighting crime and corruption, jail problems, prosecutorial case loads, probation and parole issues.

The performances aren’t without some self-aggrandizement. Each of the guys pats himself on the back, Steve for his BOPTROT prosecution when assistant Kentucky attorney general (he was a Donkey then) and Charlie for his overhaul of the state’s criminal laws when he led the Crime Commission.

Nor is the affair free of the heated dialogue inevitable when two determined fellows grab for a cupcake and there’s only one to be savored.

Charlie criticizes Steve’s running mate, Ernie Fletcher, for his vote in Congress against a bill that would have allowed importation of FDA-approved foreign prescription drugs cheaper than those available in the United States. He also mentions that Fletcher accepted $534,000 in drug company contributions during his 2000 congressional campaign.

Those barbs get Steve’s goat. What has been a genteel exchange between respectful debaters turns a mite nasty. Moderation gives way to raised voices and accusation. Who, counterattacks Steve, in so many words, is going to investigate the unions that give to the Democrats?

Since he resigned from his position in the U.S. Attorney’s office to run for lieutenant governor, Steve Pence has been practicing law with the Pedley Zielke Gordinier and Pence firm. During an interview several weeks later in his window-wrapped corner office in Meidinger Tower, he explains the irritable exchange with Owen.

Pence: “There is a tendency as you move through these forums that we want to get our message out and they want to get their message out. And when we get to some particulars, I know I feel that Ernie’s position is not being told correctly, as it was not that day, (and) that I have to set the record straight. And that’s what I did that day, and that leads to some contention. Because obviously you’re calling the other side on something that has been said falsely.”

Well then, Steve, what is your slate’s position on lowering prescription drug costs for the middle class?

Pence: “It’s a complicated issue. I think people are willing to pay a reasonable price for health insurance premiums and prescription drugs. We cannot get a mentality in our society that everything will always be provided to everybody free, in terms of socialized medicine where everything is free. If you like public housing, you’ll love socialized medicine.

“We do need to use our purchasing power on these drug companies to get reasonable prices. Ernie has never said, ‘No, I won’t allow drugs to be brought in form Canada.’ The bill that was being voted on at the time said drugs from Canada and other countries, including places in South America.

“We have the greatest health care in the United States. We develop the most drugs. And we have the safest drugs. I don’t think we really want to compromise by saying, yep, I’m gonna pick up a bottle of medicine, I can get it real cheap, but it’s from Guadalajara. There’s no way we’re going to be able to ensure the quality of that medicine. Ernie has never said anything about simply importing drugs from Canada.”

Pence is saying, one supposes, that he and his running mate believe the Food and Drug Administration would use stricter standards for approval of Canadian medicine than it would for the same medicine manufactured in Latin America. Plus he doesn’t like socialized medicine.

Charlie Owen also chats with me several weeks after the Galt House gig. He offers an innovative perspective on the state’s economic woes and health care.

Owen: “We have some of the most severe challenges in the country. And we have it because generally we are not a healthy population. And for economic growth, that is not what it has to be to sustain and meet values on other fronts.”

Charlie, why is Kentucky’s population less healthy?

Owen: “I think it’s one of the most interesting of all the issues we face.

“I’m going to give you some interesting statistics here. Ben has said, ‘Charlie is going to specifically head up economic development. Set up a system that will allow people to make money and get jobs.’ And that’s what I’m looking at first. But another piece of what I’d be doing that sounds so incredibly off the wall is a part of health care.

“It has to do with living better. If we don’t get a hold of creating a healthier population, we will kill our economic growth.

“Let me tell you the stats. Second in lung cancer. Fifth in all cancers. Thirteenth in diabetes, half of it preventable, maybe more. Sixth in cardiac problems. Much of this is preventable.

“So Ben and I came out with the idea of a surgeon general. Well, what’s he going to do? We’re going to lead our way out of problems that the Lung Association, the Heart Association, and a lot of other people are going to help. But have so far not been able to have the kind of effect we need in Kentucky. And it’s going to have to come straight from the governor. If we don’t do it, we need more taxes. We are digging a hole that we are going to have to quit digging.

“When I say the health of Kentuckians is directly related to the economy of Kentucky, that’s what I mean.”

Republican Steve Pence is a replacement. The original candidate, Mitch McConnell’s former senatorial aid Hunter Bates, was judicially bumped from the ticket because he failed the residency test. The word on the street is that Bates was hand-picked by McConnell. (Don’t believe the strings are being pull from on high? A source close to the situation, who requests anonymity, advises that Richie Farmer, the former UK basketball hero who is running for Commissioner of Agriculture, admitted to him in a recent conversation that he is on the GOP ticket at the request of McConnell, who originally asked Farmer to run for lieutenant governor.)

Pence, as the scuttlebutt goes, was also Mitch’s choice. Steve says otherwise.

Pence: “I can’t speak to how Hunter, or what was Hunter’s motivation for getting on the ticket. I know Hunter was Mitch’s chief of staff. I know that Mitch did not call me and ask me to get on the ticket. Nor did anybody else.

“I contacted the campaign, actually. When Hunter was taken off the ticket, I knew there would be other people stepping up. One of the things that motivated me to get involved is when I saw them trying to take Ernie off the ticket. I thought that was the type of political gamesmanship that the people of Kentucky nor I enjoyed seeing.”

Pence is married to an attorney and has five children. One daughter, as all who have been paying attention know, graduated last spring from Brown School, where Johanna Camenisch’s commencement address deriding the Patriot Act wasn’t exactly to Pence’s liking.

Steve, why does a nice conservative like you send your kid to Brown School?

“I’ll tell you why. Because I am not afraid. And I wasn’t afraid for my daughter who went there. Kay has always been an independent person. I think she is of a conservative nature. And I was not afraid to let her go downtown and be around people different, quite honestly, from different backgrounds, than she would have seen at Ballard.”

And what about your visceral reaction to that commencement address?

Pence: “It wasn’t really visceral or caught a nerve. It’s been portrayed as it was a visceral reaction and I must have been really upset about it. I wasn’t. I just simply thought it was the wrong forum for this. And that’s an easy explanation on that. And I’ve made it a dozen times.”

Democrat Charlie Owen is married, has a step-daughter, and is said to have made enough money in cable television and real estate that the phrase “millionaire businessman” usually precedes his name.

With Owen there were two $64 questions. The first has been answered. After months of conjecture about whether he would go deep pocket and give big to the campaign, he recently cut a personal check for $500,000.

The second question concerns ongoing rumors that Owen really wants Jim Bunning’s U.S. Senate seat. It’s up for grabs next year.

Owen: “I’m looking at one race. Right here. You ought to be able to tell from what I’ve said I am really oriented to substance. I want to see us build a better and prosperous, healthier state. I’m totally focused on that.

But, Charlie, you don’t seem like a No. 2 kind of guy?

Owen: “The lieutenant governor in Kentucky is an interesting position. It’s only what you make it. Or what the governor intends. At some point they took away the mansion, the chef, the security, the driver (laughs out loud). But I’ve got a great cook at home (laughs again). And she is pretty much security and everything else.

“As far as being second, I think it was a very difficult call, but I did it to unite the party that believes in using government for the purposes where it can work. In the last few years I’ve told the Democrats to get out of the ditch on the left side of the road. And I’ve said it more than once.”

Notwithstanding the intriguing contrast between running mates, and with the election 13 days away, eyes remain trained on Ben and Ernie. Polls are tighter than Paris Hilton’s jeans. The closer the twosome get to Ruby Laffoon status, the more these decent men lose their religion. Pointed fingers and hurled barbs fill the air.

Ernie won’t disassociate himself from a Republican Governor’s Association TV spot that erroneously accuses Chandler of mismanaging funds won in a lawsuit against Anthem, Inc. The political ad is, by all unbiased accounts, inaccurate and misleading. During debates, of which there have been about 683 around the state (margin of error ± 3 percent), Ben increasingly interrupts Fletcher before he’s even made his point.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings for their turn on the big stage, Steve and Charlie stalwartly stand by their men.

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