Kentucky has an election this year and you don't

Hey, y'all, from Central Kentucky's Bluegrass region, home of beautiful horses and fast women, where Democrats vote republican and liberals drink heavily.

It's gubernatorial election season here, in the oddest of odd-numbered years. We elect the governor in an off year in apparent hope of attracting national political attention just as the presidential primaries are heating up. Yeah, I know.

But even if it were a good idea, it wouldn't work this year anyway because Governor Steve "Cowardly Waste of Oxygen" Beshear is 27-29 points ahead of David "Most Hated Man in Kentucky" Williams.

Beshear got there by pandering shamelessly to freakazoids ($40 million in tax breaks to the Flintstones Truther Park), Big Coal/racists (using a prime-time speech to scream imprecations at the president for letting the EPA regulate clean air and water), and teabaggers (cutting state employee pay through furloughs.)

So now that his I-can-out-repug-all-y'all campaign has put the election away, Beshear is back to pretending to be a Democratic candidate. He even publicized his meeting with the Chief commiemuslinkenyanterrist himself, Barack Hussein Obama. That would be the same tyrannical Barack Hussein Obama that Beshear has spent the last year running away from and pretending didn't exist.

Except, you know, when Kentucky needed millions of dollars for disaster relief, which we do several times a year.

And it wasn't really what anyone with a grain of sense would call a "meeting." More like shake-the-prez's-hand-in-a-rope-line then pretend you gave the most powerful man on the planet what-for.

David Shankula, with the assistance of Joe Sonka now at LEO, perfectly nails Steve Beshear's lying perfidy.

Yep, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear is going to win re-election going away this November, but don't think that says anything good for Democratic candidates in Kentucky or nationwide.

Ol' Waste of Oxygen is a Democrat by courtesy, not reality.

But that doesn't mean the governor's race - and the other constitutional office races - are not knee-slappingly ludicrous.

Williams’ running mate/Lt. Gov. nominee is Richie Farmer, the incumbent Commissioner of Agriculture and the reason why it’s impossible for Kentuckians to argue that we’re not all mush-mouthed ignoramuses. To call Farmer dumb is to call a dwarf short. He’s an unbearable embarrassment. He’s also smack in the middle of what promises to be an extremely nasty divorce. Unfortunately for us, the hearing has been postponed until after the election. But that’s why Farmer, who started out the campaign much more prominently featured than Williams, has disappeared from sight.

The Commissioner of Agriculture race (yes, we elect the Commissioner of Agriculture here – waaaaaaaaay too much graft potential to leave this post in the hands of an appointee) is super-hilarious because while the incumbent Commissioner Farmer is a republican, the Democratic nominee for the post is also named … Farmer! There’s disagreement in the state as to whether republican Ritchie Farmer won the Commissioner’s race eight years ago because he played on UK’s winning basketball team or because his last name sounds like the job he wanted.

Democratic nominee Bob Farmer is hoping the latter group is right. His opponent is republican James Comer, who was predicted back in the spring to have an easy win, but between Bob’s name and the drag Williams/Ritchie are proving to be on the whole republican ticket, he may be done for.

Democratic incumbent Attorney General Jack Conway might just pull out a win, despite being the most reluctant candidate since General Sherman. Conway totally blew an easy Senate election against Tribble-Toupeed Insane Hobbit Rand Paul last year, for which state and national Democrats will never forgive him. He waited until the last minute to file for re-election, and did nothing remotely resembling campaigning for months.

If Conway wins, it’ll probably be because his republican opponent is a guy named – sit down and swallow any liquids – Todd P’Pool. That is not a typo. The man’s last name is pronounced Pee Pool. It’s French. Supposedly he’s backed by a bunch of money, but it hasn’t appeared. Donors probably can’t stop laughing long enough to sign the checks. The only votes he’ll get are from people who want to be able to spend the next four years saying Kentucky’s attorney general is named Pee Pool.

The Secretary of State’s race features the daughter of a former state Democratic Party chair who is hated by half the dems in Kentucky versus a guy who thinks it is unconstitutional for homeless people to vote, and tried to force the Secretary of State’s Office to stop allowing it. Yep, he’s the republican nominee, but not the one republicans thought would win the primary. Awkward.

We also elect the State Treasurer, who doesn’t have a whole lot to do but who hires a lot of people to do it. Democratic Incumbent Todd Hollenbach will probably win re-election, mostly because Hollenbachs have been winning elections in Kentucky since Daniel Boone was a pup.

State Auditor actually has an enormous amount of work to do, given the frequency of Bad Accounting among government entities in Kentucky, although no State Auditor in state history has done as much excellent work as the retiring incumbent Crit Luallen.

The smart move here would have been to make the Auditor an appointed position and give it to Crit for life, but that would have meant a constitutional convention at which the real owners of this state would insert a provision mandating that all Kentucky schoolchildren eat a cup of powdered coal on their cereal every morning.

The two people vying for the office, which is a traditional springboard to Treasurer or Secretary of State and then Governor, are Democratic nominee Adam Edelen and republican nominee John T. Kemper III. Neither has held public office before. Before resigning to run, Edelen was Beshear’s Chief of Staff. He is viewed by some as too handsome, too slick, and too entitled. Not that that ever stopped a Kentucky politician before. Kemper appears to be running on a platform of “I’m not a Democrat. Also, I take my wife and kids to church every week.”

It is possible that Democrats will sweep on November 8. Kentuckians like to send Democrats to Frankfort and republicans to Washington.

If I’ve piqued your interest in Kentucky politics, I highly recommend Barefoot and Progressive, Joe Sonka at LEO's Fat Lip blog, and Page One Kentucky. Or you can check out my blog at Blue in the Bluegrass.

--- Yellow Dog