Saturday, May 20, 2000
Ky. to see Bush, Gore often
Bellwether state brings attention
By Patrick Crowley
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FORT MITCHELL — There are some things Kentuckians just seem to be very good at.
Breeding horses. Fielding basketball teams. Aging bourbon. Cooking burgoo. Growing burley tobacco.
And picking presidential winners.
The last candidate to be elected president and not win Kentucky was John Kennedy. Bluegrass state voters rejected his Catholicism and went with Republican Richard Nixon.
But since Lyndon Johnson won in 1964, the state's voters have picked every winner in the presidential race.
That has given Kentucky the reputation as a bellwether state.
“Historically we've delivered the winner,” said Jerry Anglin, the top aide to Kentucky House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, and a veteran Democratic party strategist.
“Candidates know that if they win Kentucky they are going to win the election. So they work hard to win here,” he said.
That was true in 1996, when Kentucky voters saw a string of presidential candidates, vice presidential candidates and the candidates' wives during a large block of campaign visits in the final weeks of the election.
And it looks as if it's going to be true in 2000 as well.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive Republican nominee, was on a western Kentucky bus tour most of Friday, visiting a Paducah senior citizen center, a Hopkinsville barbecue restaurant and the Corvette assembly plant in Bowling Green.
The trip was similar to one made in 1996 by Presi dent Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, who will be the Democrats' presidential nominee this year.
Mr. Bush was also here May 6 for the Kentucky Derby. And Tipper Gore, Mr. Gore's wife, campaigned in Louisville in May 11.
Kentucky should get used to the attention, said U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Louisville Republican chairing Mr. Bush's campaign in Kentucky.
Mr. McConnell said Mr. Bush will make “several trips” to Kentucky during the campaign, and he expects the same from the Democrats.
Many of the stops will probably be to the same parts of western Kentucky Mr. Bush visited Friday, Mr.
McConnell said.
“Whichever candidate carries west of Interstate 65 is going to carry Kentucky,” Mr. McConnell predicted, alluding to the interstate highway that runs south from Louisville through Bowling Green and into Tennessee. “The bigger you carry that area, the bigger you are going to carry Kentucky.”
The Republicans, Mr. McConnell said, see western Kentucky as fertile ground for votes.
“The most persuadable Democrats in the state are there,” Mr. McConnell said. “If (Mr. Bush) carries the First (Congressional) District, he'll carry Kentucky.”
Kentucky is also fitting into a group of states where the campaign could be won or lost, according to Gary Bauer, a Newport native who ran for the GOP nomination before leaving the race in February.
“The Democrats have their base in certain states, and the same is true of the Republicans,” Mr. Bauer said. “But in this race there is a group of states — Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Illinois and a few others — all grouped together pretty much and all a part of the strategy of both parties.
“I really think the election is going to be decided in these states ... because the front-runner has not yet been established and who will win is not yet clear,” he said.
Mr. McConnell agreed.
“Kentucky is strategically positioned, especially this year,” he said. “There is a group of about eight states where this election battle is going to be fought, and Kentucky is in that group.”
Kentucky's importance in presidential elections sometimes defies political logic.
It's a small state with only eight electoral votes. Its primary is late, long after everyone knows who the nominees will be. And even in 1992 and 1996, when Kentucky was trending Republican and electing GOP candidates to its Congressional seats, Mr. Clinton carried the state.
Kenton County Clerk Bill Aylor calls that “the swing state” factor.
“Kentucky is always up in the air,” Mr. Aylor said. “There are certain states that are obviously going to go Republican or Democrat. But Kentucky can go either way.”
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