If Kentucky Republicans choose someone besides incumbent Jim Bunning as their candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2010, it won’t be Kentucky Senate President David Williams. The Burkesville Republican — the most influential Republican in Frankfort — announced earlier this week that he would not challenge Bunning for the Senate seat. Instead, Williams said he will seek re-election to his seat in the Kentucky Senate.
That’s the right decision for both Williams personally and for the Kentucky Republican Party.
Williams would be surrendering a lot of political clout by moving from being leader of the GOP majority in the Kentucky Senate to being among the newest and least influential members of the U.S. Senate. In addition, Williams’ Kentucky Senate is considered a “safe” one, and if he seeks re-election in 2010, his re-election is almost a certainty.
However, Williams would be taking a huge political risk by challenging Bunning. He could well lose to the Hall of Fame baseball pitcher in the GOP primary, and even if he doesn’t, Williams would be opposed by a strong Democrat in the November election.
While Williams has been extremely successful in advancing the Republican agenda in Frankfort, he also has been controversial and is disliked by many in Kentucky. From our vantage point, David Williams has as many — if not more — negatives than Bunning.
If Bunning, who will be 79 next year, decides he can’t win and chooses not to seek a third Senate term, Republicans have a strong candidate waiting in the wings in Secretary of State Trey Grayson. In contrast to Williams, Grayson has a reputation in Frankfort of being able to work with both parties to advance his programs.
Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo and Attorney General Jack Conway are the leading Democrats vying for Bunning’s seat. They are both strong candidates with bright political futures. Regardless of whether it is Mongiardo or Conway who is nominated to face either Bunning or Grayson in November of 2010, the people of Kentucky will have good candidates from which to choose. Democracy is best served when people are given a choice between good, strong candidates. That seems certain to happen in next year’s U.S. Senate race in Kentucky.
Editorials
Williams is out — 06/23/09
Both parties still have strong candidates for the Senate seat
- Editorials
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Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.
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Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.
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'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.
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Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.
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Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.
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Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.
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Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.
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Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.
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Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.
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Charles Chattin
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