FRANKFORT —
FRANKFORT — My old friend Mitch Jayne loved to collect the odd but unwittingly descriptive expressions sometimes used by rural folk.
Once, while hanging out with Mitch at an outdoor bluegrass festival where The Dillards, the band with which Mitch performed was to play, I listened as Mitch struck up a conversation with a fan in bib overalls and baseball cap who looked and spoke a bit like Junior Samples, a character on the old “Hee Haw” show. The fellow was a farmer, but apparently not a very successful one.
“Farming never has been what it used to be,” the man lamented to Mitch, who struggled mightily to keep his face straight while I ducked and hid my own.
The reluctance of Democratic office-holders to speak at Fancy Farm this weekend reminded me of that statement because today’s Kentucky Democrats never have been what they used to be.
Attorney General Jack Conway likes to invoke the words of Wendell Ford, one of Kentucky’s most beloved Democrats. But a couple of years ago it got him into trouble at Fancy Farm when he misquoted Ford by substituting a profanity for “son of a gun.”
Maybe that’s why Conway, like almost every Democratic constitutional officer from Gov. Steve Beshear to Treasurer Todd Hollenbach, declined to speak this year. Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes is the only exception.
I can’t imagine Ford turning down an opportunity to blast Republicans. Remember his line about Ernie Fletcher during the 2003 governor’s race? Fletcher, Ford said, “is a pilot without an airplane, a doctor without a patient and a preacher without a congregation.”
Part of the reason Democrats were reluctant to go to Fancy Farm is they knew Republicans Mitch McConnell and Jeff Hoover planned to tie them to President Barack Obama. But as Julian Carroll — another former Democratic governor who knew how to deliver a stem-winding speech about his opponents — observed last week, none of those Democratic office-holders are on this year’s ballot.
Carroll related to me the story of how he dealt with a similar situation in 1972. Carroll was lieutenant governor but planning to run for governor, and he found his party’s presidential nominee, George McGovern, way out of step with conservative Kentucky voters. Carroll consulted Emerson “Doc” Beauchamp, the legendary Logan County Democratic strongman, about what he should do.
“Now Julian,” Beauchamp said to Carroll, “you go ahead and be for him and when it’s all over, no one will remember you were for him. But if you go against him, no one will ever forget it.”
Carroll went home and campaigned for McGovern who carried Carroll’s home county of McCracken. Two years later, Carroll was elected to a full term as governor after succeeding Ford, who had left for the U.S. Senate.
Imagine Beshear, Lt. Gov. Jerry Abramson, Secretary of State Alison Grimes, Auditor Adam Edelen, Hollenbach or Conway doing that for Obama. The only Kentucky Democrats other than Carroll — who now serves in the state Senate — who might be up to it are U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, who actually openly supports Obama, and House Speaker Greg Stumbo.
But, as an Eastern Kentucky politician and coal supporter, Stumbo wasn’t likely to spend much time defending Obama. (Stumbo spoke at Fancy Farm Saturday, after this column was filed on Friday.)
Stumbo likes to quote “Give ‘Em Hell” Harry Truman whose vice president was Kentucky’s Alben Barkley. In 1956, Truman told Look Magazine: “I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.”
The truth is that today’s Kentucky Democrats never have been what they used to be.
Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/
cnhifrankfort.
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Ronnie Ellis
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