By Charles Wolfe
The Associated Press

FRANKFORT - The selection of Steve Pence as a running mate gives a boost to Ernie Fletcher's gubernatorial campaign in at least two ways.

One is Pence's record - to flesh out his image - as a tough-on-governmental-crime prosecutor. That should lend some substance to Fletcher's often-stated but vaguely articulated desire to "clean up" things in Frankfort.

Otherwise, the "time for a change" theme hardly makes Fletcher unique among the four Republican candidates, considering that Democrats have held the governorship for 32 straight years.

It also helps Fletcher that Pence is from Louisville, the base of rival gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Jackson, who was a popular Jefferson County clerk and judge-executive.

Pence, who was U.S. attorney for the western half of Kentucky, was selected by Fletcher to replace Hunter Bates in the No. 2 spot on his slate.

A judge disqualified Bates because he had not lived in Kentucky long enough to run for lieutenant governor.

Besides being a potential drain on Jackson's support, Pence is a counterweight to lieutenant governor candidate Bob Heleringer, who for 22 years was a popular legislator in Jefferson County and who with Steve Nunn makes up the slate most aggressively contesting Fletcher, still perceived by many as the Republican establishment choice.

In the contest over who can best clean up Frankfort, Jackson offers her own record in county government and the absence of scandals in her administrations.

Heleringer and Nunn can point to state government contracting - especially Heleringer, who was the General Assembly's most vociferous critic of contract spending during his years on a House-Senate contracting oversight committee.

To this competition, Pence brings some actual scalps.

He sent people to prison as a lead prosecutor of Operation Boptrot, the FBI code name for an investigation of bribery and influence peddling in and around the General Assembly in the early 1990s.

Pence personally prosecuted Don Blandford and Bruce Wilkinson for taking bribes from lobbyists. Blandford was speaker of the House and Wilkinson was appointments secretary for his uncle, Gov. Wallace Wilkinson.

Pence apparently went to the head of the list upon letting it be known, by way of a phone conversation with Fletcher campaign attorney James Milliman, that he was interested in joining the Fletcher slate if Fletcher was interested in him. Pence's overture "immediately caught our attention," Fletcher said.

Party regulars seemed pleased. "When you think about Steve Pence, you thing about integrity," state Republican Chairman Ellen Williams said. "The theme of our Republican campaigns is 'clean up the mess in Frankfort.' "

The combination of Fletcher from Lexington and Pence from Louisville "is nice geographically," said Robert Gable, a former state GOP chairman who with Williams was among about 160 well-wishers at the Fletcher-Pence debut last week in Lexington.

Fletcher cited Pence's "depth of understanding of some of the things that need to change culturally in Frankfort."