Pol Watchers

Lunsford airs second TV ad in U.S. Senate race

UPDATED AT 1:30 P.M.

Democrat Bruce Lunsford's campaign for the U.S. Senate rolled out his second television ad Thursday, claiming that Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell is "the master" of turning campaign contributions from special interests such as oil companies into legislative favors.

McConnell's campaign responded by bringing up problems Lunsford had with his nursing home business.

In his new 30-second ad entitled "How It Works," Lunsford is shown standing near a split-rail fence in a rural setting..

"Here's how it works in Washington," says Lunsford. "The politicians get millions in campaign cash. The special interests get what they want. And we get the short end of the stick.

"Mitch McConnell is the master of this system. It's how Big Oil gets billions in tax breaks and we get $4 a gallon gas. It's how Wall Street gets bailed out, and people lose their homes. It's how senators get indicted, and Mitch McConnell says nothing.

"If you're tired of this system, I say it's time for a change. I'm Bruce Lunsford and I approve this message."

Lunsford campaign spokesman Cary Stemle said in a statement that McConnell's "been bought and paid for with millions from Big Oil and other special interests.

"And now with one of his closest friends in the Senate under indictment for corruption, he's silent. What does that tell us? It's time for change."

Stemle said he was referring to U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

Justin Brasell, McConnell's campaign manager, issued  a comment on the Lunsford ad. 

It said, "At least Lunsford is consistent, going back to the primary every ad he has run has been full of baseless negative attacks.

"Here is how it works in Lunsford's world: you run a nursing home business that takes millions from the federal government and then are forced to pay record fines for treatment of senior citizens.  Then you bankrupt the business but make sure that you walk away with millions.

"That's how it it works in Lunsford's world."

In 1985, Lunsford started a health care business called Vencor. It grew into a multimillion-dollar corporation with 60,000 employees in 46 states.

In 1998, the company made headlines when it evicted Medicaid patients from nursing homes to make way for private-pay ones.

Lunsford said he did not know what staff were doing and apologized. Eventually, the patients were invited to return, and he company paid a $270,000 fine.

A year later the company was forced to file for bankruptcy. Lunsford has said the 1997 budget bill, which changed Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates, contributed to the company's problems.

Here's the ad:

--Jack Brammer

Pol Watchers at Fancy Farm

One of our summer reporting interns, Anna Tong, had a video camera at Fancy Farm and decided to see which politicians might like to have one of the 1,000 hand fans our marketing department passed out promoting Pol Watchers. Here's what happened:

As always, we'll continue reporting about every politician -- even if they didn't want a fan -- with as much fairness and accuracy as humanly possible.

- John Stamper

1,000,000

Just before 11:30 Monday night, someone paid Pol Watchers its 1,000,000th visit. Thank you. 

When we started Pol Watchers 17 months ago, we began with this mission statement:

Herald-Leader reporters strive daily to cover Kentucky politics with more depth, breadth, speed and authority than anyone else. Pol Watchers, the newspaper’s new political blog, gives us one more way to serve up the day’s breaking political news, along with original reporting you won’t find anywhere else. From Lexington’s city hall to the state house, we’ve got it covered. Visit often.

Our goal remains the same today.

For the curious, Pol Watchers now averages more than 30,000 unique visitors, 90,000 visits and 130,000 page views each month.

We also have well over 400 subscribers to our feed, including nearly 250 people who receive a daily e-mail containing all of our content.

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- John Stamper

A comment on comments

We've had to spend way too much time the past few days deleting comments that don't comply with our comment policy. It's getting old.

Therefore, those who comment must now submit a valid e-mail address before their comment will be published. The address will not be published, but the added layer of accountability should help deter the seemingly tireless handful of people who insist on making comments that don't conform with our very clearly stated policy. Also, comments will only be accepted for two weeks after a post is published.

We enjoy reading the vibrant discussions that often occur on the blog and we hope they continue. However, this is not a place to launch unsubstantiated attacks on anyone.

If you would like to pass along rumors or news tips about potential wrongdoing that you feel should be further investigated, please do so in an e-mail. Our addresses are near the top of the left column.

Finally, if you haven't yet read our comment policy (it's posted near the bottom of the left column), here it is:

Although we do not have any obligation to monitor comments on this blog, we reserve the right at all times to check this blog and to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us in our sole discretion and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We also reserve the right to permanently block any user who violates these terms and conditions. All threats to systems or site infrastructure shall be assumed genuine in nature and will be reported to the appropriate law enforcement authorities.

- John Stamper

A note about polling

Now that the election results have sunk in, we thought we'd see how they matched up with pre-election polling, including the Herald-Leader/Action News 36 Election Poll. Here's how they break down:

With 99.9 percent of precincts reporting, Gov.-elect Steve Beshear got 58.7 percent of the vote, compared to 41.3 percent for Gov. Ernie Fletcher. Beshear's margin of victory was 17.4 points.

The final H-L/WTVQ poll, conducted by Research 2000, showed the race at 55-40, with 5 percent undecided. If you allocate the undecideds based on the ultimate outcome (that's what pollsters tell you to do), our poll would have shown the race at 57.9-42.1, a 15.8 point margin. That puts the H-L/WTVQ poll 1.6 percentage points away from the ultimate outcome.

The final Rasmussen Reports poll showed the race at 54-39, with 7 percent undecided. With the undecideds allocated, the poll would have shown the race at 58.1-41.9, a 16.2 point margin. That puts the Rasmussen Reports poll 1.2 percentage points away from the ultimate outcome.

The final SurveyUSA poll showed the race at 59-39, with 2 percent undecided. With the undecideds allocated, the poll would have shown the race at 60.2-39.8, a 20.4 point margin. That puts the SurveyUSA poll 3 percentage points away from the ultimate outcome.

The final Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll showed the race at 56.2-33.4, with 10.4 percent undecided. With the undecideds allocated, the poll would have shown the race at 62.3-37.7, a 24.6 point margin. That puts the Bluegrass Poll 7.2 percentage points away from the ultimate outcome.

So, Rasmussen was the most accurate poll, followed closely by the H-L/WTVQ poll.

If you're uncomfortable allocating the undecided voters and would rather throw them out, the H-L/WTVQ poll and Rasmussen Reports poll tie as the most accurate. The 15 point margin in those polls was 2.4 percentage points away from the ultimate outcome, compared to 2.6 points for SurveyUSA, and 5.4 points for the Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll.

Needless to say, we're pleased with the accuracy of our polling and hope to be so lucky next time.

- John Stamper

1,374 posts later ...

A year ago Saturday (Oct. 6), we published our mission statement as the first post on Pol Watchers. After 1,374 posts, 11,587 comments, 540,210 visits and 949,690 page views, our mission remains the same:

Herald-Leader reporters strive daily to cover Kentucky politics with more depth, breadth, speed and authority than anyone else. Pol Watchers, the newspaper’s new political blog, gives us one more way to serve up the day’s breaking political news, along with original reporting you won’t find anywhere else. From Lexington’s city hall to the state house, we’ve got it covered. Visit often.

You can judge for yourself whether we succeeded or not. Either way, we'll try again this year.

- John Stamper

500,000 and counting

Shortly after 7 a.m. today our 500,000th visitor came to Pol Watchers. We just wanted to say thank you.

Also, more than 400 of you now subscribe to our blog's feed, including 197 email subscribers.

If you haven't yet hopped on the bandwagon, you can subscribe to our daily email, which comes around 4 p.m. each day, in the box below. Or click on the orange button to subscribe to our feed through the reader of your choice.

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- John Stamper

Herald-Leader asks court to release probe report

The Lexington Herald-Leader filed a motion today asking Franklin Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate to allow the Cincinnati law firm Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur to release an investigation report its lawyers wrote in 1995 regarding Steve Beshear's law firm.

Here's how it all came about:

• Several motions and depositions related to the lawsuit filed by the Kentucky Central Life Insurance Co. liquidator (originally Don W. Stephens) against the Mid-America Bank of Louisville, Dudley Webb and the estate of Bud Burnett referenced an apparent conflict of interest by Stites & Harbison. The issue was whether it was proper for the firm to provide advice to the Bank of Louisville regarding a transaction of Kentucky Central securities at the same time the firm represented the liquidator of the failing insurance company.

• On Sept. 5, 2007, the Herald-Leader sent an open records request to the state office of insurance asking for any documents, letters, etc. related to any review of conduct of Stites & Harbison.

• On Sept. 10, 2007, Julie McPeak, executive director of the office of insurance, denied that request because past cases established that documents related to a liquidation of a company are exempt from the open records act.

• Later that day, the Herald-Leader re-filed its request directed at McPeak in her capacity as liquidator of Kentucky Central asking for the documents for reasons of public interest. (Hence the fact that the first article on the subject identifies McPeak first as liquidator before later noting that she also serves as executive director.)

• On Sept. 11, 2007, McPeak made available some court documents that responded to the Herald-Leader's request -- court motions and other documents that for some reason don't seem to be included in the massive Kentucky Central case files in Franklin Circuit Court. Several of those documents were key pieces of the first article, including a letter from Judge William L. Graham to Greg E. Mitchell of the firm Frost & Jacobs (now Frost, Brown, Todd) that references an investigation report of Stites & Harbison.

• On Sept. 13, 2007, Mark Elsener of Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur -- the firm that conducted the probe of Stites & Harbison -- said that office may still have one of the reports but that it could only be released with the permission of a court.

So that's why the Herald-Leader has filed its motion today asking for that report and other related documents to be released to the public.

- Ryan Alessi

KET schedules debates for fall races

Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher and Steve Beshear, his Democratic challenger in the race for governor, will participate in two one-hour debates this fall on the Kentucky Educational Television network.  They will be Oct. 15 and 29.

KET  has invited all candidates on the Nov. 6 ballot in contested races for statewide constitutional offices to participate in forums to be broadcast live statewide on KET1 from its Lexington studio.

The schedule of the forums follows.  All times are Eastern time.

*Thursday, Sept. 27, 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., candidates  for secretary of state.

*Thursday, Sept. 27, 8:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., candidates for agriculture commissioner.

*Thursday, Oct. 4, 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., candidates for auditor.

*Thursday, Oct. 4, 8:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., candidates for state treasurer.

*Monday, Oct. 8, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., candidates for attorney general.

*Monday, Oct. 15, 8 p.m.; to 9 p.m., candidates for governor.

*Monday, Oct. 22, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., candidates for lieutenant governor.

*Monday, Oct. 29, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., candidates for governor.

In addition to the live statewide broadcast on KET1, each forum will be  videostreamed live and archived online and made available via podcast at www.ket.org/election.

--Jack Brammer

100 and counting

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- John Stamper

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