Sunday’s column:
FRANKFORT — This and that before taking a long holiday break:
When retired Marine Lt. Col. Andrew Horne announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate last week, one liberal blog gushingly described him as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “worst nightmare.”
I think I’ll wait a bit before joining that chorus.
Horne, who lost to John Yarmuth in last year’s Democratic primary for the 3rd District congressional seat, has potential. But that’s all it is at the moment. Just potential.
He remains relatively unknown outside Jefferson County. Plus, there’s the money issue. Can Horne rock the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s world enough that it will respond with a national effort to match the $10 million (and counting) McConnell has raised?
Still, Horne has a couple of assets that suggest he could become a bit of a nightmare for McConnell with the right amount of money and a slicker campaign style than he displayed last year.
First, he has no record in public office that McConnell can sift through to find the ammo for his famous attack ads. Former Gov. Paul Patton recently told the Herald-Leader’s Ryan Alessi, “Bluntly, a person without an extensive record might be the best candidate (for Democrats). Then, the race would be on McConnell.”
I agree.
Second, Horne has a credibility on the Iraq war that no other potential Democratic candidate, or even McConnell, can match. He’s been there, done that, still has the T-shirt. The others can’t say that.
And Horne’s on-line video announcement Thursday contained a perfect slogan for stressing that difference in a race against McConnell: “Mitch McConnell carries George Bush’s water on Iraq; I carried a rifle in Iraq.”
Andrew Horne as Mitch McConnell’s “worst nightmare”? No, not yet. A project with potential? Maybe.
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In what might be seen as an attempt to set the tone for his administration, Gov. Steve Beshear dropped in at the outset of Friday’s Executive Branch Ethics Commission meeting.
In his brief appearance, he told the commission members how important their job was and stressed his commitment to running an ethical administration.
Long after Beshear left the meeting, commission members got around to issuing advisory opinions on three of his appointees: Environmental and Public Protection Secretary Robert Vance, Personnel Secretary Nikki Jackson and Communications Director Phil Osborne.
In each instance, the commission concluded that the Beshear appointee could take the job, but with certain conditions for avoiding conflicts of interest. For Vance and Jackson, compliance with those conditions should not be overly difficult. But the conditions outlined for Osborne made me wonder if he could be effective as communications director even before he opted not to take the job.
Osborne is sole owner of Preston-Osborne, a public relations firm with numerous clients that do business with the state or have an interest in public policy issues. He planned to take a leave of absence and accept no salary or dividends from the company while on the state payroll. But he would have continued to own it.
And that would have proved problematic for him in light of Friday’s opinion, which said in part: “The commission believes the potential employee should have no involvement (discussions, decisions, actions, recommendations) as part of his official duty in any matters pertaining to his firm, any clients of his firm, or any firms that compete with his firm.”
One of Preston-Osborne’s clients is the Kentucky Equine Education Project, which supports expanded gambling – as does Beshear – and whose members in the racing industry stand to benefit if it passes.
As communications director, Osborne’s role would have included crafting the message for the Beshear administration. A key portion of that message, at least over the next few months, will involve expanded gambling.
Clearly, the opinion left Osborne facing an unacceptable dilemma. He couldn’t be involved in crafting the message for Topic A on the governor’s agenda while his firm retained KEEP as a client, which meant his effectiveness in his job would have been greatly diminished.
Ultimately, Beshear and Osborne got this one right, but not without a bit of messiness.
Larry Dale Keeling, a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, has spent most of his 35-plus years in journalism reporting on or writing editorials and columns about Kentucky’s politics and political issues. He now brings his experience and expertise on those topics to the KyKurmudgeon blog.