Senate race not short on attacks

By Ryan Alessi
RALESSI@HERALD-LEADER.COM

FRANKFORT -- Ads are flying in the special election for the Eastern Kentucky state Senate seat to replace Daniel Mongiardo, the new lieutenant governor, and just about everyone is up in arms over them.

The Kentucky Republican Party is protesting Democratic candidate Scott Alexander's spots that claim Republican Brandon Smith voted to cut coal severance tax money to the region in 2004.

And Alexander's camp is objecting to a new GOP ad that implies that Democratic officials traded a $50,000-a-year job to the former Bell County Democratic chairman in exchange for his support.

The emergence of tough-talking advertisements is the latest phase in what has been a controversial special election process that has rankled officials from Harlan to Frankfort.

The commercials also come less than two weeks before voters in the counties of Bell, Perry, Leslie and Harlan that constitute the 30th Senate District go to the polls Feb. 5 to decide between Smith and Alexander.

Earlier this week, Alexander's campaign launched the race's first radio ads -- and yesterday a companion TV commercial -- against Smith, who has been a state representative for Perry County and part of Harlan County since 2001.

"In the 2004 House budget, Rep. Brandon Smith chose to support Gov. Ernie Fletcher over us and voted to cut our share of coal severance money, sending it to other parts of the state to fund their programs, their projects," the latest version of Alexander's ad says.

Kim Geveden, Alexander's campaign spokesman, said Smith's vote against the 2004 budget bill signified that he didn't want coal severance tax money coming to the region. Coal severance tax money, paid to counties by the mining companies, is coveted in Eastern Kentucky, paying for a variety of projects from playgrounds to business parks to water and sewer lines.

Smith did join other Republicans in opposing the 2004 version of that budget, which ended up mired in a political squabble over Fletcher's tax plan and had to be re-written in 2005. The budget controversy was unrelated to coal severance tax money and no funding was taken out of Smith's district as a result of that no-vote.

In fact, Smith later crossed Fletcher during the 2005 budget negotiations when the governor moved to skim some of the coal counties' severance tax money off to fund a statewide reading program.

"I'm for education 100 percent, but still they're spending money that's coming out of my district, and I don't know what it's going for," Smith said in the Feb. 12, 2005 Herald-Leader.

Smith turned the tables yesterday, saying Alexander -- who represented the same Perry County House seat before Smith -- once allowed $15,000 in Perry County's coal severance tax money to go toward a project in Knott County, which was out of the district.

Smith said Alexander's ad is "just a lie -- it's defamatory."

Geveden, Alexander's campaign spokesman, defended the spot saying "every word in that ad is completely accurate."

"That Brandon Smith is embarrassed about his voting record is understandable, but the voters of the district need to know that he voted against the budget in 2004, that, in effect, cut the coal severance tax money from the district," he said.

Meanwhile, Geveden called Republican Party ads against Alexander "blatantly more misleading than our ads."

In the 60-second spots that started airing Thursday, it accuses Democrats of cutting "backroom deals" to nominate Alexander.

It alludes to former Bell County Democratic Party Chairman Leo Haggerty accepting a $50,000 at the Governor's Office for Local Development after he supported the nomination of Alexander as the party's candidate.

"Scott Alexander's nomination was fixed by Frankfort political bosses and the Bell County Democratic chairman received a $50,000 job," the announcer says. "You talk about backroom deals."

The spot doesn't name Haggerty or explicitly accuse him of trading his support of Alexander in exchange for the state job. But the ad doesn't offer any supporting evidence that "Frankfort" officials "fixed" the process.

Gov. Steve Beshear's administration has denied any suggestion it tried to influence the nomination process.

Comments

[MOE]

Half-truths from the KDP? Go figure.