Players change, but politics still a game

COLD SPRING - He leads a quiet life now, spends his winter days doting on his grandchildren. But this week, deep into retirement, the man in the house at 134 Winters Lane felt the adrenalin start to flow.

The Kentucky legislature was in an uproar. On the first day of its four-day organizational session - usually a routine gathering to install legislators, make committee assignments and confirm leadership roles - the minority Republicans staged a remarkable coup.

When 15 Democrats left the floor in a last-ditch effort to prevent a vote on the Senate's top two leadership positions, Sen. Gex ''Jay'' Williams, a Boone County Republican, engineered a dramatic power shift: The 18-member Republican minority, aided by five Democratic defectors, ousted the Senate president and installed a leader beholden to them.

The man at 134 Winters Lane took note. What a historic moment in Senate chambers. He once shot rubber bands across that very room.

'A queasy feeling'

Sometimes he would sit there carving name plates for his colleagues out of Styrofoam cups.

''I just liked to be busy,'' he says. ''I liked to keep my hands busy. Especially when you're in a boring session.''

There's nothing boring about what's going on in Frankfort now, though. What happened on the Senate floor last week held Mr. Schmidt's attention - though he was miles and miles away. This palace coup - it's historic.

The last time a storm this big swirled through the chambers, it swept up Mr. Schmidt.

In 1993, he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during the federal investigation of state government known as Boptrot and was given unsupervised probation. You couldn't find a more unlikely casualty of an FBI investigation if you tried.

Mr. Schmidt is a good man, kind and gentle and true, a devoted husband and loving grandfather with life in the proper perspective. He still feels kind of sick when he thinks about those horrible days - ''Every time I talk about it I get that queasy feeling,'' he says - but he accepted his punishment and put his life back together.

Watching it closely

He wouldn't want to sit in Senate chambers again even if he got paid $100,000 a year and didn't have to go to any of the meetings. But there's no denying it: This politics, it gets in the blood.

''The adrenalin's starting to flow,'' he says.

That's thanks to last week's developments, which he watched closely: The Republicans, giddy after the takeover; the Democrats, defiant.

''I just think it's hilarious to listen to how the Democratic leadership is talking now,'' Mr. Schmidt says, ''because that's the way they treated the Republicans for years.

''My gosh, you don't run around and holler the way they're hollering. They're acting like they're going to take their ball and go home.''

Though Mr. Schmidt was part of the Republican minority, he was an effective legislator because he worked with the Democrats, Sen. Jim Callahan, D-Southgate, has said.

He pushed for establishment of Northern Kentucky University, helping to convince his friend, former Gov. Louie Nunn, of the need for more than a community college in the area.

''There were just a number of things we were able to do,'' Mr. Schmidt said.

Including this: Every now and then, one of Arthur L. Schmidt's rubber bands would drop into the intended light fixture above the Senate floor. But everyone knows that what really always stunk up the joint was politics.

Of that - and of everything else unpure - Art Schmidt was, and always will be, innocent.

Rob Kaiser is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. His column appears on Sundays and Thursdays. He can be reached at 578-5584.