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Three state government reporters will join host Ferrell Wellman on this week's "Comment on Kentucky."
They are Al Mayo, with Kentucky News Network; Stephenie Steitzer, with The Courier-Journal; and Greg Stotelmyer, with Lexington's WTVQ-Channel 36.
The public affairs show on the Kentucky Educational Network begins at 8 p.m. Friday. It is on KET1.
--Jack Brammer
Four prominent Democrats -- state Auditor Crit Luallen, U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, Attorney General Jack Conway and Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo, signed a letter to U.S. Senate candidate Greg Fischer asking him to stop running an ad against his rival.
Those Democrats, describing themselves as "concerned Kentuckians," urged Fischer to "remove your personal attack ad from the air immediately, take the high road, and spend the final weeks of the primary running a campaign focused on why you are right for the job, not divisive character attacks that are part of the reason Washington needs to change."
Luallen, Yarmuth, Conway and Mongiardo say that instead of fostering a competitive primary, the ad helps Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, whose seat is up for re-election and who will face the winner of the May 20 Democratic primary.
Fischer has been running a spot aimed at highlighting past business problems of companies founded by Democratic front-runner Bruce Lunsford -- specifically improper billing to Medicare and Medicaid by Lunsford's nursing home companies.
But the four Democratic officials say the ad has crossed a line.
"Your campaign has launched a personal attack against a fellow Democrat's character," the letter says to Fischer. "By doing so, your campaign is playing right into Senator McConnell's hands and is endangering the opportunity for change this November."
View the letter here.
UPDATE 4:36 p.m.: Luallen, who had considered running for the U.S. Senate seat, said her signing the letter to Fischer's campaign is not an endorsement of Lunsford's campaign.
"I'm not endorsing in the Democratic primary," she said. "I just want a Democrat to win in November and I think negative advertising among Democrats is not healthy for the party."
Asked who initiated the letter, she said, "There had been lots of discussion by active Democrats and the Lunsford campaign was concerned about it.
"We thought it best to state our views in a letter."
Fischer said at a news conference Thursday afternoon in Louisville that it is obvious that Lunsford would prefer that his business practices not be discussed in this race.
"The fact that we're airing them has clearly struck a raw nerve," Fischer said. "His campaign has accused us of false and misleading advertising --a charge we flatly deny."
Fischer said voters must have information "to be able to compare the past performance and the record of each of the candidates.
"My record is an open book."
Ken Shapero, a spokesman for Fischer, said the campaign "will continue to talk about Mr. Lunsford's record."
- Ryan Alessi
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By Linda B. Blackford
LBLACKFORD@HERALD-LEADER.COM
The son of outgoing Supreme Court Chief Justice
Joseph Lambert works for a company that has been the financial adviser
on 70 percent of the new courthouses built between 1998 and 2006.
Lambert became chief justice in 1998, and oversees a building program
that has constructed 60 new courthouses.
Joseph P. Lambert Jr. works in the Louisville office of Ross, Sinclaire Associates, a full-service securities brokerage and investment banking firm. Reached there on Wednesday, he declined to comment.
According to a list of new justice centers built or approved since 1998, Ross, Sinclaire was the financial adviser on 43 of the 60 projects, helping market municipal bonds to finance them. The facilities arm of the Administrative Office of the Courts, which was overseen by Chief Justice Lambert, runs the construction program for new courthouses.
Joseph Lambert, Jr. made headlines earlier this month because his girlfriend, Joanna Cruz, was hired for a human resources job at the AOC that was not advertised. She and Lambert's son moved from Texas to Kentucky in January 2008.
All the contracts for new courthouses are decided by local Project Development Boards, a group of people from the community that is chaired by the county judge-executive. The board also has an AOC representative and makes many of the decisions involved with courthouse construction. The AOC sets all design and construction standards and oversees financing for the projects.
AOC Director Jason Nemes deferred all questions to Ross, Sinclaire.
Joseph Lambert Jr. started at the Louisville office of Ross, Sinclaire in February, said Murray Sinclaire, co-founder and CEO of the company.
"We get resumes all the time, we're always looking to expand, and he was one of many," Sinclaire said. "His dad, whom I don't know, had nothing to do with it."
By Brandon Ortiz
BORTIZ@HERALD-LEADER.COM
PIKEVILLE -- Pike County plans to acquire downtown buildings owned by state Supreme Court Justice Will T. Scott and members of his family for the site of a proposed courthouse.
Scott, a justice since 2005, said the land deal poses no conflict of interest since he doesn't even want to sell his property.
He's not happy that his office has been selected as the site for the $28.4 million project and would prefer to keep his building at 209 Second Street in Pikeville's downtown. Scott said he hopes his office won't be needed.
Nonetheless, he said he'll accept the county's offer of $360,000 rather than fight condemnation. Scott said he does not want to stand in the way of Pike County's getting a new courthouse.
"I hope the day I breathe my last breath I have a chance to be in this office," Scott said. "And then upon my death it's going to belong to my children. I don't want to sell it. I don't need to sell it."
The Weddington Theater and the building at 209 Second Street in
Pikeville are in a block scheduled for razing in order to build a new
courthouse. Photo by Jerry Boggs | Appalachian News-Express
While Kentucky picked up some new registered voters this spring, the rolls didn't swell the way other states have seen, according to figures released by Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson and the state board of elections.
Kentucky gained 16,333 voters -- a growth rate of 0.58 percent -- since November, despite a highly competitive and unsettled Democratic presidential primary race that will be coming to Kentucky May 20.
With that race in mind, the Democrats saw the largest boost in new voters -- 13,259, compared to 2,577 new Republicans and 497 "others," which include independents, libertarians, green party members and more third parties.
The slight increase in voters between November '07 and the upcoming primary is less than the bump between the November '06 general election and the May 2007 primary, which was an increase of 28,725 voters, or 1 percent.
Grayson said he was "disappointed that Kentucky did not see dramatically increased registration figures as was seen in many other states this election cycle."
"I am encouraged that Kentucky has set a new voter registration record," he added in a statement. "It is my hope that Kentucky voters will become more engaged in the primary election races and that this increase in registrations will lead to a larger turnout on Election Day."
Here are the updated totals of registered voters for the May 20 primary:
- Ryan Alessi
Touting the importance of Kentucky in the coming Democratic primary elections, key supporters of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign opened its newest regional headquarters in Lexington Wednesday.
Jerry Lundergan, the former Kentucky Democratic Party chairman who serves on Clinton’s national finance committee, said Clinton and her former president husband plan to be in Kentucky starting next Wednesday — the day after Indiana and North Carolina Democrats vote.
“And Hillary’s going to be in Kentucky on election night, May 20th,” Lundergan told the crowd of nearly 200 who filled the parking lot of a former bank building at 901 Richmond Road. “So we want to make sure when the vote comes in, it’s big for her.”
Lundergan was joined by former Kentucky first lady and Miss America, Phyllis George, who said Clinton “needs the women’s vote, especially.”
Lundergan also listed other key Kentucky Democrats supporting Clinton, including former governors Paul Patton, Martha Layne Collins and Julian Carroll.
After acknowledging Clinton is behind Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic primary in some measurements, Lundergan adopted the campaign’s current message that Clinton has won the large states that are crucial in the fall’s general election, which is decided by the electoral college.
“It’s not about the popular vote. We know the popular vote doesn’t elect a president,” Lundergan said. “If that were so, Al Gore would have been president.”
Anne Atcher of Lexington showed up with a sidekick — a lifesized cardboard cutout of Clinton decked out with a hat and beaded necklace.
Atcher, wearing a “Team Hillary, Yes she will” shirt, said she got the cutout for her birthday April 17. She said she sits it next to her to watch debates and election results.
“I feel like she has more experience,” Atcher said of why she supports the real Clinton.
The Lexington office marks the fourth of at least nine headquarters the Clinton campaign plans to open.
Obama has 10 offices across the state. That campaign opened its office on Reynolds Road in Lexington last month.
- Ryan Alessi
By Ryan Alessi
ralessi@herald-leader.com
Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race has wrapped itself into a legal pretzel as Democrat Bruce Lunsford’s campaign accuses his primary opponent of improperly fashioning a TV ad and the state GOP complains that Lunsford has skirted the law.
In the most recent development, a U.S. Department of Justice official confirmed Wednesday that the agency would ask Lunsford’s Democratic opponent, Greg Fischer, to stop using its official seal in a TV ad against Lunsford.
The Lunsford campaign dispatched a letter to the U.S. Justice Department Wednesday to inform the agency of the seal’s three cameos “clearly implying that the department endorses or approves of the advertisement,” wrote attorney Joseph E. Sandler of the Washington, D.C., firm of Sandler, Reiff & Young.
Federal law forbids the use of the seal without permission.
Fischer’s campaign showed the seal three times in a 30-second ad meant to call attention to past Medicare billing problems of Lunsford’s nursing home company, Vencor.
Kim Geveden, Fischer’s consultant, said he didn’t seek permission to use the seal. “They’re a public agency that issued public documents,” he said.
One of those documents was a three-page Justice Department press release from 2001 outlining a $219 million settlement Lunsford’s nursing home companies paid to resolve charges that, among other things, the company “knowingly submitted false claims to Medicare.”
But Geveden dismissed the Lunsford campaign as whiners. “This is typical Bruce and his D.C. handlers. They want to whine about every little thing except for the facts,” he said.
However, Peter Carr, the Justice Department’s deputy director of public affairs, said the agency would ask the Fischer campaign to stop.
“The Department intends to contact the campaign to request that it cease from using the seal,” Carr said in a statement to the Herald-Leader.
UPDATE 9:10 p.m.: Geveden said the campaign had not yet been contacted. "The ad is going to run its course," he said. "It's sad that Bruce Lunsford has had to appeal to George Bush's Department of Justice to deny Kentuckians the truth."
Continue reading "Senate race tangled in legal accusations" »
By Ryan Alessi
ralessi@herald-leader.com
Democratic U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler’s decision Tuesday to back Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in the presidential primary has touched off a brush fire of mixed responses from constituents over the last 48 hours.
Denis Fleming, Chandler’s chief of staff, said what started as an avalanche of 300 to 500 critical calls — including some “racially insensitive” statements — on Tuesday shifted to more supportive responses on Wednesday.
“I don’t think we were under any illusion that the endorsement would be immediately accepted by everyone. Our hope is that the decision will withstand the test of time and we hope prove itself to have been the correct one,” Fleming said from Chandler’s Washington office.
On Wednesday, staffers kept a tally of the phone calls: 154 favorable to 89 negative ones by 4 p.m. And the roughly 200 e-mails the offices received were “about evenly split,” Fleming added.
Part of the uptick in positive responses could be explained by Obama’s grassroots mobilization. Hillary Bullock, a volunteer organizer of Lexington-area Obama backers, said e-mails were dispatched to more than 600 local supporters “asking them to give his office a call and thank him for his endorsement.”
UPDATE: Meanwhile, the liberal Web sites DailyKos and ActBlue have raised money for Chandler in response to the negative feedback he received. As of Thursday morning, ActBlue reported raising more than $19,000 from more than 640 donors.
What’s certain is that Chandler’s pick of Obama, who is trailing New York Sen. Hillary Clinton in most early polls of Kentucky Democratic voters, has sparked conversation and debate across Chandler’s central Kentucky congressional district.
“I was kind of surprised he didn’t wait for the primary here on the 20th before he made that judgement to see who his constituents were for,” said Wenona Houston, a retired nursing home office manager from Lexington. “If everyone had went for Obama that would be one thing, but he didn’t wait to see that, and that makes me angry.”
Houston was among the hundreds who called Chandler’s Lexington office to complain on Tuesday. She said she told a woman answering the phone there that “I would never vote for Chandler again if he went through with this.”
Houston said she picked Clinton months ago and called Chandler’s office to urge her congressman to back Clinton, too.
Chandler will serve as one of nine superdelegates from Kentucky at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August. Houston said the biggest problem she had with Obama is his handling of the controversy surrounding his former preacher, Jeremiah Wright.
“I am concerned about the angriness that this Wright guy exhibited,” Houston said.
Obama, on Tuesday, repudiated Wright’s most recent comments that the government fostered the spread of AIDS among African-Americans, calling his former preacher’s rhetoric “divisive.”
Fleming said some of the initial responses Chandler’s office received were racially insensitive, although he declined to describe any specifics. “They were plainly inappropriate,” he said.
Continue reading "Chandler gets mixed feedback on Obama endorsement" »
FRANKFORT — Bruce Lunsford started airing a TV ad Wednesday in response to a critical ad run by his opponent, Greg Fischer, in the Democratic race for U.S. Senate in the May 20 primary election.
Lunsford said the Fischer ad that questioned Lunsford’s business practices was not fair.
Lunsford noted that a Paducah Sun editorial entitled “Mud” criticized the Fischer ad and that an article in The Courier-Journal said the Fischer ad used an actress to provide the voice of an alleged victim of nursing homes run by Vencor, a company formerly owned by Lunsford.
Vencor was a multimillion-dollar health care corporation that went through bankruptcy reorganization in 1999. In 1998, some of Vencor's nursing homes began turning away Medicaid patients to make room for private-pay patients.
Lunsford said he did not know that staff members at the nursing home were evicting poor patients. He apologized and flew to Florida, where one of the publicized evictions was taking place. Eventually those patients -- fewer than 100, according to Lunsford's campaign staff last year -- were invited to return. The company paid a $270,000 fine in Florida.
The U.S. Senate seat in play is now held by Republican Mitch McConnell, who is seeking re-election.
Here's the ad.
--Jack Brammer
The presidential race in Kentucky is reaching full swing, as both campaigns marshal key supporters in the Bluegrass state to take on public roles on the candidates' behalf.
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's campaign on Wednesday announced its so-called "truth squad," which will respond to any "misleading attacks," said campaign staffer Clark Stevens.
The truth squad members include former state Sen. David Karem and Councilman David Tandy -- both of Louisville -- and state Rep. Ruth Ann Palumbo of Lexington.
Palumbo said she is prepared to respond to attacks on Obama through advertising, public speeches and by talking with reporters. She said she expects New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign to aggressively challenge Obama.
"The Clinton campaign has been using divisive, misleading attacks on Barack Obama and will do the same in Kentucky," she said in a conference call with reporters.
Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign had tapped state Sen. Ray Jones of Pikeville and Louisville Metro Councilwoman Tina Ward Pugh on Tuesday to join Clinton finance committee member and former Kentucky Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Lundergan on a conference call that criticized Obama for urging his supporters to try to end the primary contest by helping him win in Indiana's May 6 primary.
On Wednesday evening, Clinton's campaign will officially open its headquarters at 901 Richmond Road.
- Ryan Alessi
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Ryan Alessi, political writer; Jack Brammer, state government reporter; Beth Musgrave, social services reporter; John Cheves, government accountability reporter; Michelle Ku, Lexington government reporter and John Stamper, government editor.
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