Snake Eyes: Beshear’s Bad Bet

You may have already seen Cheves’ excellent piece on Steve Beshear’s do-nothing governorship:

Many of Gov. Beshear’s 2007 campaign pledges remain undone

By John Cheves

When Steve Beshear ran for governor in 2007, he built a winning campaign on the promise of legalizing slot machines at horse racetracks.

Slots would save Kentucky’s ailing horse industry and create $500 million a year in state revenue, Beshear told voters. He would use that money to end college tuition hikes, give health insurance to every child and extend prescription drug coverage to senior citizens.

“Now, the question is, what happens if we don’t pass it?” Beshear asked at a rally that year. “Well, I’m gonna tell you something. I’m not going to have to answer that question because I am going to pass it.”

He didn’t pass it.

So the better roads, better health care and better schools Steve promised never happened. And now?

On his 2011 campaign platform — creating jobs and balancing the state budget — Beshear’s accomplishments are debatable.

Beshear claims that he “balanced the budget eight times in three years.” However, Kentucky relied on $3 billion in federal stimulus money to fill the void created by decreasing state tax revenue. Washington, which Beshear attacks as dysfunctional in his campaign ads, helped Kentucky pay for prisons, schools, health care, construction and many other routine expenses.

Even with that outside aid, the state’s debts — including the multi-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability for state workers, among the nation’s worst — prompted ratings agencies to downgrade Kentucky’s bonds this year.

For many of you it’s probably painful to read these objective facts about a guy we’re all supposed to love and support. And many Dems probably skipped over the article in the paper Monday. Who wants to read bad news if you already know how bad it is?

Still — it’s a scintillating read and you should.

Particularly sad in this is that it didn’t have to be this way.

And I don’t just mean that if gambling had passed then Beshear would have had all the money in the world and thus all his campaign promises could have been kept. I mean — Beshear had then a golden opportunity to propose an actual platform for change and he could have then implemented that change once elected.

You see, in 2007, Steve was running against Ernie Fletcher and Ernie had no chance. It was obvious months out that Beshear would win if all he did was sit on his couch. But the Steve Beshear of 2007 didn’t sit on his couch, he promised Kentucky the moon but each and every one of his promises came with a contingency: Gambling.

Beshear’s plan to regressively tax the state’s poor to pay for infrastructure and government services wasn’t an unrealistic plan — Republicans do that sort of thing all the time — but it was a highly unrealistic one.

As I wrote back in September 2007 for ACE Weekly:

SNAKE EYES; Steve Beshear’s economic platform isn’t a gamble, it’s a charade

“The people of Kentucky are not dumb.”
–Steve Beshear, Democratic nominee for governor

….Rather than raise taxes to provide government services and grow the economy, Steve Beshear wants to create the illusion of entertainment.

Mr. Beshear argues that home-grown casinos will generate the money to buttress his political promises. He argues that Kentuckians will gladly give their money to the local casino and that this revenue will save the state’s citizens the burden of higher taxes.

But it all adds up to the same thing. It is fuzzy math.

For Beshear’s gambling plan to work, we the people would have to approve it in a statewide referendum next year.

The same poll Mr. Beshear bludgeoned the Governor with should serve as a stark warning.

Conducted at the behest of the Lexington Herald-Leader and WTVQ-36, Democrats comprised a clear majority of the respondents.

Yet still, it is the one issue in which Fletcher defeats Beshear. Half the state’s population are opposed to the influx of casino gambling. Another 10% are unconvinced.

That leaves Beshear’s economic platform little room for success — and that means his entire campaign is built on a yet-to-be broken promise.

The point then remains true now.

Steve Beshear was clearly going to win his election. Rather than stake out a leadership position and propose real overhauls to how government works (like, common sense tax reform), Beshear decided to stay very quiet, propose nothing. It was a gamble and he lost.

And sure, some might say that had Steve Beshear suggested a comprehensive tax overhaul, or other principles of the party he apparently belongs to, then he would have lost the election.

But that’s ridiculous.

Steve Beshear was running against an absolutely useless opponent. An opponent so weak, so broken, the Republican Party barely supported him.

Beshear could have proposed renaming the Capitol the Kremlin and himself Stalin and he still would have won — maybe not by as much, maybe by just 1%. But he would have won. And he would have had a mandate.

Instead Steve Beshear won and he had nothing. So he’s done nothing. He has nothing to do. Instead of leadership, Steve Beshear chose to run up the score. He defeated an already defeated opponent in a cake walk.

And here we are, four years later.

*****

[For the record: PDF: 9.27.2007, ACE WEEKLY Op-Ed, "SNAKE EYES; Steve Beshear's economic platform isn't a gamble, it's a charade."]