Garland Barr the Fourth is getting his campaign together and he’s gonna have his driver take him on a little tour. Alessi reports:
Barr said he’s still working on the schedule of campaign stops that will take him through the seven new counties to the 6th District — Bath, Menifee, Nicholas, Robertson, Wolfe and Fleming counties and part of Harrison County — as well as Clark, Montgomery, Powell and Estill counties. Those last four remain in the 6th District after the once-a-decade reapportionment process to make sure the populations of the districts are even.
Alessi also gets Garland on the record with his various economic views which once again demonstrates his problem — as a Tea Panderer he kinda understands what he’s supposed to say but he also kinda understands that it doesn’t all make sense, thus, Garland gets confused.
So we won’t be able to spend money on government projects if we’re in debt. But spending money on infrastructure is good. But taxes should be lowered. But government spending itself is bad. And raising government revenues is bad. Even though debt is also bad. Because it limits government spending on infrastructure.
If you can decipher Garland’s positions, then you can also decipher this… (it’s Not Safe For Work, folks, so David Williams: close the door.)
A quick roundup of Congressional redistricting finds Andy Barr giving up in the 6th after his fellow Republicans strengthened themselves and left the Tea Panderer out in the cold.
The bill was signed into law on Friday by Gov. Beshear. After the House and Senate failed to come to an agreement on their own maps, House Speaker Greg Stumbo and 5th District Congressman Hal Rogers got together and crafted a map of their own.
That map strengthens all incumbents, including Ben Chandler. This angered 6th District area Republicans, like state Sen. Damon Thayer. A week after trying to expunge the area’s own Senator, Thayer was forced to pivot, flip-flopping his position so that now he finds himself incensed and offended by the redistricting process. Our hearts go out to him, and the others. From the CJ:
Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr, R-Lexington, called HB 302 the “Ben Chandler Lifetime Employment Act.”
Thayer called the bill an “insult” to the people of Central Kentucky and described it as “horrific.”
….Rep. Stan Lee, R-Lexington, complained that “we have turned our allegiance more to the congressional delegation than to the taxpayers.” He said the people in his district oppose the plan.
Rep. Lonnie Napier, R-Lancaster, said his constituents don’t want to move from the 6th District to the 2nd, as the plan requires.
He said the people in his district are “not a bit happy.”
Now unlike Thayer’s plan to disappear Kathy Stein, the Hal Rogers compromise map doesn’t do anything too crazy… it just shifts a few lines and Brett Guthrie should be a) concerned, and b) offended that so many Republicans are unhappy about now having his conservative credentials as their new Congressman.
What do Fayette-area Republicans have against Brett Guthrie?
Garland Barr IV was similarly offended by Hal Rogers’ plan. He said:
It’s weird that Barr and his Republican allies have taken this opportunity not to welcome their new voters or accept any challenge, but rather to throw up their hands, waving the white flag.
If you want to call it the “Ben Chandler Lifetime Employment Act” and you want to spend your time appealing to voters who can no longer vote for you because they are now represented by Brett Guthrie, that’s your choice, but it’s not particularly smart to declare your race lost while simultaneously alienating and denigrating your new voters.
The only explanation for why Barr and his allies would crap all over Hal Rogers and the Republican power nexus that crafted these maps is that the Barr campaign is continuing its strategy of pandering to the Tea Party.
Cynically believing the Tea Partiers and rank and file conservative activists to be total idiots, Andy Barr is trying to make them believe this was all Ben Chandler’s doing. Which is simply not true. Barr and 6th District republicans were pawned by Rogers and the Republican controlled delegation to make the other districts more conservative.
Each of the four Republican members, Reps. Brett Guthrie, Ed Whitfield, Hal Rogers and retiring Rep. Geoff Davis, are drawn into conservative-oriented seats.
There is a catch for Republicans, however: In keeping their House members safe, they also bolstered Democratic Rep. Ben Chandler by shifting more Democratic voters into his district. Chandler is a top GOP target who survived the 2010 election in one of the closest races of the year. Under the plan, Chandler’s Lexington-based 6th District seat will become slightly more Democratic-friendly.
Sonka/LEO’s Fat Lip has more on both the internal GOP squabbling that led to this compromise, as well as some sharp words from Ms. Kathy Stein for Thayer and Kerr and a quick numbers game looking at how the new 6th might alter vote turnouts for Barr and Chandler.
Though it looked like congressional redistricting would go to the courts, since the legislature couldn’t reach a compromise, that will no longer be the case. A wild morning full of emotions and accusations lead to the passage of House Bill 302, which will now go in the books and finalize the boundaries for congressional districts in Kentucky.
Though an agreement appeared to be reached a week ago, it was nixed at the last minute by central Kentuckian Republicans, particularly Sen. Damon Thayer and 6th District congressional candidate Andy Barr, who got Tea Partiers from their area to flood Republican senators with calls telling them not to agree to it. While the deal reached eased the concerns of Republicans in other districts, it does give Chandler a slightly more favorable district than what he previously had. In nixing the deal, several Republicans were quite liberal in expressing their anger at Barr for sabotaging it (particularly Tom Jensen).
Tea Panderer Garland Barr IV (colloquially, “Andy”) got a boost the other day. While he complains about the Congressional redistricting stalemate (here, here), the smart guys at the Grand Ol’ National Party have decided to upgrade Garlandy from near junk bond status.
“We are looking forward to working with Andy Barr, who has already proven himself by meeting rigorous benchmarks in the ‘Young Guns’ program that will position his campaign for victory,” said NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions of Texas said in a statement. “Andy Barr’s dedication and experience enables him to advocate effectively for pro-growth policies and fight the failed status quo in Washington.”
Barr raised $112,319 in the last quarter of 2011 and more than $427,000 since announcing his candidacy in June. He started 2012 with $364,584 on hand.
Two other Republicans — Patrick Kelly II of Lexington and Curtis Kenimer of Paris — also have filed for the 6th District GOP primary.
Not only did Kentucky House and Senate leaders screw up the state legislature redistricting, they appear to have hit a dead end on the mandated 10-year re-draw of Congressional districts.
The House favored a bill which would have strengthened Ben Chandler in the 6th (after he eked out a 600 vote victory, one vote per precinct, in 2010) and bettered Dem chances in the 1st and 5th while making the already Awesome 3rd even more Awesome.
The Senate Republicans, on the other hand, sought to maintain the Republican strength in the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th, and attack Chandler in the 6th.
House leader Greg Stumbo and 5th District porker Hal Rogers came up with something of a compromise, House Republican leader Jeff Hoover was kinda on board, but the Senate Republicans weren’t having it, especially Damon Thayer who, having already tried to disenfranchise the voters of Fayette County, mitched and boehned about a perceived “damage” to Fayette by allowing the 6th to get Bluer.
The filing deadline for Congressional seats, already extended a week, was today.
The House and Senate failed to reach a compromise Tuesday on a new congressional redistricting plan as the filing deadline passed — and House Speaker Greg Stumbo said legislators likely won’t try to change the current district lines this session.
He conceded, however, that such an approach would likely be ruled unconstitutional if challenged in court.
A decade after the current lines were drawn, the districts vary considerably in population — in violation of court standards — and Stumbo said he didn’t believe they would withstand scrutiny.
Should a candidate (Barr, etc) or a national party (GOP, etc) challenge the lack of new districting, Stumbo thinks the courts will just do the drawing.
Four of Kentucky’s five incumbent congressmen will have no opposition in the state’s May 22 primary.
And Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District, is facing only a perennial candidate, Burrel Charles Farnsley, as a primary opponent and a relatively unknown Republican, Brooks Wicker, for the general election, according to filings in the Kentucky secretary of state’s office. The filing deadline was Tuesday.
The 1st (Whitfield) has two Dems in the Primary, the 2nd (Guthrie) is probably already over, the 5th (Rogers) possibly bought and paid for, and the 6th a grudge match between Garland Barr and Ben Chandler.
William Adkins, the chairman of the Grant County Democratic Party, filed Tuesday to run in Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District seat occupied by U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis, R-Hebron.
….Adkins will face Greg Frank, of Corinth, in the Democratic primary.
While we wait for Judge Shepherd’s ruling on the State House/State Senate redistricting madness, the other fight — over Congressional redistricting — is still boiling. Already delayed one week, today’s filding deadline may get pushed back still further with Dems and Repubs in Frankfort still jockeying for positing. Stumbo says three or four more days may be needed.
The new “compromise” map of Kentucky’s six congressional district includes concessions made by all sides.
Democrats wanted to move Owensboro from the 2nd District to the 1st District, and that’s not going to happen. And Republicans wanted to avoid moving Ashland and the surrounding counties from the 4th District to the 5th, and at least part of that area will.
But since details of the proposed map have dripped out, the strongest opposition has come from Central Kentucky Republicans. Andy Barr, the Lexington lawyer who is making his second run for the 6th District, and state Sen. Damon Thayer of Georgetown, have come out strongly against the map because it would move several conservative counties out of the southwest corner of the 6th District and into the 2nd District.
Here’s a hilarious quote from Damon Thayer, who redrew the State Senate map to remove Kathy Stein’s 13th District seat and damage Central Kentucky.
“I can’t support it in its current form,” said Thayer, a Georgetown Republican. “It makes drastic changes to the current congressional lines that I feel are unnecessary, and in particular, since I live in Central Kentucky, it really does great damage to the Central Kentucky compact nature of the 6th congressional district.
Andy Barr will make his rematch with Ben Chandler official today when he files to run a second time for the 6th District seat. Garland Barr reports having $425,000 on hand.
Before Garlandy can get to Ben, he’ll have to first get through the Republican primary. Curtis Kenimer of Paris, KY filed his papers on Thursday.
Kenimer’s business, Marsetta LLC, gave money to the UK College of Agriculture, and he appears to be involved in horse breeding (here, here, here, here ). His campaign contributions appear limited to just $750 — coming in three installments of $250 each in 1996 and 2000 to the Republican National Committee, listing his profession as “farmer.” Kenimer, class of 1972, also gave money to the Farmhouse Fraternity on the UK campus in their mission to bring their digs into the 21st Century (which is a good cause given the worn out look of the current frat house). Kenimer’s wife, Kathy, is a director of the Scott County Habitat for Humanity.
At the same time, the State House and State Senate continue to bicker over Congressional redistricting, increasing the liklihood that the filing deadline will be pushed back:
The Bluegrass State’s redistricting process hit a discordant note this week. The Democrat-held state House and the Republican-held state Senate are stuck at an impasse over how to redraw Congressional maps.
With Kentucky facing a Jan. 31 filing deadline, a growing consensus in Frankfort is that the filing period will have to be moved later in the year as result of the Legislature’s inability to compromise on a bill. If the deadlock remains in place over the next weeks, the potential for judicial involvement grows.
So… if you haven’t gotten your stuff together to run against Ben in the primary, your friends in Frankfort might buy you an extra few days (or weeks).
This one’s a doozy. We’ve been putting it off but then last night we walked down the steps of the Carnegie Center with Congressman Ben Chandler after the Gatewood memorial and, of course, that was not the time, but today is as good as any. Let’s get ‘er done.
***MOST REPREHENSIBLE BEN CHANDLER VOTE OF 2011***
Before we get to the bad ones, it is worth noting (and only fair) that 2011 was not an entirely dark year for our dear 6th District Congressman, little “d”, Ben Chandler. The few bright spots include his championing of public broadcasting, his no-brainer stance on not Andy Barring Medicare, his stance for Obama’s Jobs Act, maybe a couple of health care votes, his vote with the Dems on HR3 and abortion and the fact that, year-end, he gave up on Grover Norquist (or, at least claimed he did) and finally inched toward expiring the Bush Tax Cuts (while admirable, a bit too late).
My mother always said, if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all. That was nice. Now let’s get to what Ben Chandler did that was, to put it politely, not nice. (To put it accurately, reprehensible.)
RUNNERS UP:
Ben Chandler votes with Republicans to dismantle the EPA. Chandler vote lined up with 1st District Rep. Ed Whitfield, who explained the intention of his and Chandler’s vote thusly: “We must stop this out-of-control EPA and that’s precisely what this bill is designed to do.”
When hundreds of Republicans signed on to a letter to the EPA and President Obama written by one of their rank-and-file attacking the EPA’s enforcement of the Clean Water Act, what did Ben Chandler do? Yup… Ben signed on, too. Here’s a taste of the letter:
“The President and his unelected bureaucrats are once again attempting to change the rules as the game is being played to ram their radical agenda down the throats of the American people…. By the Corps and EPA’ own admission, their ‘Guidance’ will substantively change federal policy and significantly increase the scope of the federal government’s reach to regulate waters.”
The horror! Clean water? Like, gag me with a spoon.
Right around the one-year anniversary of the BP® Gulf Oil Spill™, Ben Chandler joined the Republican majority in voting to open the gulfstream waters to more oil drilling.
The House Republicans added an amendment into the Defense spending bill reaffirming Congressional support for the Defense of Marriage Act which doesn’t protect heterosexual unions from divorce or affairs but does protect them from queers getting hitched. Defender of marriage and homophobe Ben Chandler voted with the Republicans.
In July, the House Republicans tried again to destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and 10 Democrats voted alongside them. One man who won’t protect you from America-hating credit-predators?Ben Chandler! (To be fair, this vote is a show of consistency since Ben voted against the CFPB originally in 2010 whilst voting against reforming Wall Street.)
In September, Ben Chandler voted with Ed Whitfield on Whitfield’s TRAIN Act to gut the EPA and block mercury regulations. Because kids should be free to play with and consume mercury.
In March, Ben Chandler joined every single member of the Republican controlled House of Representatives in a vote to strip the EPA of funding for its work to regulate toxic coal ash. The Sierra Club explained the impact of Chandler’s vote:
The Energy Information Agency calculates that coal power plants in Kentucky generate 8.6 million tons of coal waste each year, that is accumulating in 44 coal ash impoundments and continually release toxic mercury, selenium, arsenic and hexavalent chromium into our water and food chain. Seven of these coal ash sites have been designated as “high hazard” by EPA, which means that a break in the impoundment would result in significant environmental damage, illnesses or deaths.
In December, the House passed the Regulatory Flexibility Act. No Republicans voted against it, and Ben Chandler voted for it. John Conyers wrote of the Republican/Chandler bill:
My conservative colleagues argue that this legislation is necessary because too much regulation is responsible for our nation’s current economic difficulties. They must be suffering from some collective form of amnesia.It was not too much regulation of Wall Street that led to the near collapse of the worldwide marketplace. It was not too much regulation that caused the BP oil spill. And, it was not too much regulation that allowed mortgage brokers, servicers, bankers and others to engage in predatory lending and falsify foreclosure documents in court proceedings.
Last January, Ben Chandler tried to quietly slip this vote by you, joining all the Republicans to vote for the “Repeal and Replace” bill which would have ordered four GOP-controlled House committees to go through the Health Care Bill, systematically ripping out its guts. Requiring insurance companies to cover prostate and breast exams? Gone. Requiring them to cover people with pre-exisitng conditions? Gone. Gone, gone, gone.
Mere hours before Barack Obama’s 2011 State of the Union, Ben Chandler voted with the unanimous House Republican majorityto hand unilateral financial power over non-Defense spending to one single member of the House — Mr. Paul Ryan.
How do you pick a winner when those are the runners up? What could be worse? What could be more reprehensible? What was Ben Chandler’s most reprehensible vote of 2011?
And the winner is…….
Ben Chandler voted to strip funding for aid to HIV-stricken women and poor starving children around the world!
Let them eat cake? Screw cake.
Yes, my fellow 6th District Kentuckians, that’s precisely what Ben Chandler voted for back on July 21st, 2011, when the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to block US foreign aid to organizations that provide medicine and food to sick and dying women and children.
One single Democrat on the committee voted with the Republicans.
DownWithTyranny always has its eye on the Blue Dog Democrat coalition, that ever diminishing breed of GOP sympathizers.
A couple weeks ago, they looked at the curious case of Raul Grijalva, the Arizona Congressman recently named the MVP of the progressives in the House of Representatives. Grijalva, it seems, has been reverse-targeted by the Democratic Party.
Rather than feed him money by placing him on the “Frontline” list of endangered Representatives, Steve Israel and the DCCC have shunned him in favor of… an increasingly comprehensive list of the House Blue Dog Coalition.
The DCCC recently slipped another Blue Dog into its fundraising list. From DWT:
Israel just added fellow Blue Dog John Barrow (GA) to the Frontline list, although Democratic donors on the DCCC page have so far given him exactly zero dollars, just what he deserves. What grassroots Democrats give directly, though, hardly matters at all. The DCCC will, once again, redirect whatever is donated to the organization– millions of dollars– to efforts to bolster corrupt, conservative corporate shills like Barrow.
Barrow joins some of the most reprehensible Democrats in Congress on the Frontline List of Shame: Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR), Larry Kissell (proto-Blue Dog-NC), Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Leonard Boswell (Blue Dog-IA). If you contribute to the DCCC, the bulk of whatever you give winds up in the hands of ineffective, self-serving DCCC insiders who will waste it on badly done TV ads for conservative Democrats who are anti-Choice, anti-union, anti-gay, and who have far more in common with Eric Cantor and John Boehner than with Raúl Grijalva. When it came to the crucial roll call votes in 2011, Barrow voted with the Democrats 25.74% of the time. That’s right, he crossed the aisle to vote with Cantor and Boehner almost three-quarters of the time! According to ProgressivePunch, Ron Paul voted with the Democrats more than Barrow (35.75%)!
They also looked at each of Steve Israel’s DCCC Frontline team. It’s sad:
John Barrow (GA): 74.26% with the GOP Ben Chandler (KY): 68.09% with the GOP
Bill Owens (NY): 63.68% with the GOP
Larry Kissell (NC): 58.82% with the GOP
Mike McIntyre (NC): 58.52% with the GOP
Leonard Boswell (IA): 55.15% with the GOP
Obviously we have our work cut out for ourselves here in the 6th to either replace Ben or more realistically drag him kicking and screaming into the embrace of his own beliefs (like, say, never again voting to slash aid to poor women and children dying of HIV/AIDS), but it’s clear that so long as powerful interests within the national Democratic Party are rewarding that type of reprehensible behavior, it’s harder to do either.
The longest serving congressman in Kentucky would see the boundaries around his largely mountainous district drastically reshaped under a plan that cleared the state House on Tuesday.
Other congressional districts also would be geographically reformed in the proposal that cleared the Democratic-controlled House 54-42, largely along party lines. Only two Democrats, Rep. Rick Nelson of Middlesboro and Rep. Jody Richards of Bowling Green, broke ranks to vote against the measure.
The Republican-controlled state Senate has signaled it will not go along with the House’s approved map. House Speaker Greg Stumbo says too many changes will throw the entire process off course for at least a year.
“While most Kentuckians are worried about finding or keeping their jobs, Ben Chandler is obviously more concerned about protecting his own job by promoting an incumbent-protection scheme that removes tens of thousands of central Kentucky voters from the 6th Congressional District.”
It is always nice to note good works and, sadly, too often we aren’t given good works to note and that results in some people thinking we don’t like Ben or Steve. That’s not true. If they did what was right, we’d have nothing but good things to say.
So! It’s time to say some good things about these two because they each have performed admirably in the last couple weeks, slipping in some quality action right before the end of the year… most likely in an effort to better their standings in the Rooties. (Still to come, Best Democrat, Worst Democrat… and more!)
Let’s start with the Governor. On December 30th, Steve Beshear finally weighed in on the proposed hospital merger that would have taken from the people and given to the wealthy. Steve Beshear was having none of it:
[M]ost troubling to me is the loss of control of a public asset. University Hospital is a public asset with an important public mission, and if this merger were allowed to happen, U of L and the public would have only indirect and minority influence over the new statewide network’s affairs and its use of state assets. Many of these issues have been raised and analyzed in a report from Attorney General Jack Conway, who recommends not going forward with the merger.
U of L and the other merger partners have worked hard to address the concerns that have been raised, and I appreciate those efforts.
However, after exhaustive discussions and research, I have determined that this proposed transaction is not in the best interest of the Commonwealth and therefore should not move forward. In my opinion the risks to the public outweigh the potential benefits.
Right on, Steve.
The private members of the merger deal went through with their part of their plan, creating the state’s largest health care system on Friday without the public assets. It’s worth noting that while Beshear appeared to make the right decision, he has indicated that the door is not totally closed, telling both CN|2′s Alessi and the HL’s Truman that there are still some talks going on. Let’s hope Steve holds the line.
Now… Ben Chandler. Good man, good heart, knows what’s right… sometimes does it. And he, too, came through. Talking with Alessi:
Seven of Kentucky’s eight members of the congressional delegation signed the Americans for Tax Reform “no tax” pledge that they have found they now can’t get out of.
U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler of Versailles, the only Democrat in that group to sign, now says signing that pledge that is monitored by Grover Norquist was one of the biggest mistakes of his congressional career.
“I’m sorry I did that, too,” Chandler said just before the 6:00 of the interview video. “I thought I was doing it for one session. And he made a determination that you do it forever. And I don’t think anybody ought to make a pledge like that forever.”
You should watch this video. Ben Chandler goes pinko. He says at 1:45
When you have too much of the wealth concentrated in the hands of very very few at the top, then that’s not being circulated in the economy like it should be. I reject this notion of those people being the job creators. The job creators are people like you and me who are out there buying things and participating in the economy. We’re creating jobs.
And then later!
“What the Republicans really want to do is they just want to starve government of money, I think,” Chandler said (4:00 mark). “The record will show that they want to get money in the hands of the wealthy people and they think when they get the money it will trickle down to the rest of us.”
Watch away:
These aren’t startling words from Ben. He knows what’s right, always has, but too often (maybe even more often than not over this past year) he’s gone the other way. If this Ben was the Ben who showed up everyday, the 6th would be well-represented.
His choice to finally denounce Grover Norquist is good. The excuse he’s using — that somehow he didn’t understand that the pledge is forever — is stupid. Just stupid. Plenty of people are using the excuse and, frankly, it doesn’t matter what the excuse is… so long as the Bush tax cuts expire and Ben Chandler helps to make it happen.
The more important question, of course, remains whether either of these actions can change the outcome of the Rooties.
***UPDATE***
Steve Beshear stuck by his decision on the merger, again rejecting it on Monday, January 9th.
SHE WON'T GO!
Democratic Party Precinct Elections
MARCH 31st
