While Kentuckians watched from the sidelines while voters in Ohio, Virginia, New Jersey and other states went to the polls to vote Tuesday, Kentucky’s once-every-four-years break from constant campaigns ended just hours after the votes had been counted in other states.
Wednesday was the first day in which candidates could file for political offices up for grabs in 2010 and a surprising number of area candidates took advantage of that fact by being among the first to throw their hats into the ring. We suspect they will be joined by many others before the 4 p.m. Jan. 26 deadline for filing for most offices on the 2010 ballot.
Between now and then, we hope many well-qualified individuals who have never sought political office will decide to run. The more choices voters have — both in the May primary and in the November general election — the better the odds of the people electing good people to lead our state, cities and counties beginning in 2011.
In 2009, the only elections in Kentucky were to fill vacancies in the Kentucky General Assembly or to the decide whether to legalize alcohol sales in a handful of communities. But nearly every city and county elective office will be on the ballot in 2010, in addition to the U.S. Senate seat now held by Jim Bunning, who is not seeking re-election, and every seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Every seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives also will be on the 2010 ballot including the currently vacant one in the 96th District that will be filled in a December 8 special election in Carter and Lewis counties. State Senate seats in even-numbered districts also will be on the 2010 ballot including the 18th District seat won by Robin Webb, D-Grayson, in a special election in August.
Of course, while most of us in Kentucky had no opportunity to vote in 2009, the major candidates for Bunning’s Senate seat — Democrats Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo and Attorney General Jack Conway and Republicans Secretary of State Trey Grayson and Bowling Green ophthalmologist Rand Paul — have been on the campaign trail for months, and Gov. Steve Beshear has already announced that Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson will be his running mate in 2011.
While our hope is that voters will be given a choice of candidates in every race on the ballot in 2010, we know from experience that a number of incumbents will be unopposed. We recognize that the lack of opposition usually is because the incumbent is considered unbeatable, but we are naive enough to believe that democracy is best served when people are given a choice. Even the best public officials become more responsive to the people they serve when they have opposition. No opposition leads to complacency.
The people we will elect in 2010 will have a greater impact on our daily lives than any other elected officials. They will set our tax rates, decide which roads get paved, determine traffic patterns, decide where and when we can smoke, determine where we can park and do all sorts of things that directly impact us.
A representative can only be as good as the people who run for office, and frankly, there have been more than a few times in the last 20 or 30 years when we have disappointed in the overall quality of the candidates. We hope that is not the case in 2010. It’s too important.
Editorials
Back on the trail — 11/06/09
Election that wasn’t in state brings start of 2010 campaign
- Editorials
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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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Retiring
Dr. Gregory Adkins has served as president of Ashland Community and Technical College during a period of rapid growth and substantial changes. Adkins announced last week that he will retire June 30 after almost 11 years as the head of the school that now is located not only just off 13th Street in Ashland but also is in EastPark more than 20 miles from the Ashland campus.
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Try again
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