Word: fletcherism
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When hundreds gather for Thursday's Kentucky Governor's Annual Ham Breakfast at the state fair, it's a safe bet that the draw will be the prized ham - which last year brought a record $340,000 at auction - and not Gov. Ernie Fletcher. The governor, whose 2003 election capped nearly a decade of prior Republican gains in the once-Democrat-dominated state, finds himself with few friends and a growing list of potential challengers from within his own party. His tenuous re-election prospects - and the distancing from Fletcher by the state's Republican chieftain, Senator Mitch McConnell - suggest...
...Indicted in May for allegedly orchestrating a statewide patronage scheme, Fletcher won a courthouse reprieve earlier this month when a special judge ruled that he can't be prosecuted for official misconduct while in office. But State Senator David Williams, a fellow Republican, pointedly notes that the ruling does raise "the specter of impeachment...
...that may be the least of the governor's worries. With less than a year to go before the 2007 primary, Fletcher's challenge is to keep from losing his job the old-fashioned way: in the voting booth. "There is a real chance he can lose the primary," said longtime political writer Al Cross, who now heads a rural journalism institute at the University of Kentucky. "He lacks the confidence, apparently, of most of the leaders of his party...
...just as out-of-power Democrats across the U.S. are casting 2006 as their version of the Republicans' 1994, Kentucky Democrats are smelling blood as Fletcher's problems mount. All the while, McConnell has uncharacteristically stayed out of the fray, and kept his focus in Washington, where he is deputy Senate majority leader and Bill Frist's heir apparent. "McConnell was absolutely right in singling out [then-U.S. Rep.] Ernie Fletcher as the candidate most likely to win the governorship," in 2003 said John David Dyche, a Louisville lawyer and political columnist. "But [McConnell] has not been involved...
...Lawmakers in the three states face the same problems: along with negative feelings about Bush and the war, all three states have unpopular Republican governors. In Kentucky, two-thirds of the state's residents disapprove of Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who has been indicted in an investigation of his hiring and firing of state employees, and Ohio's Bob Taft has a 78% disapproval rating, after pleading no contest to accepting free golf outings from a prominent Republican activist in the state last year. "The Governors are a very big problem in the Midwest," says Mark Souder, a House Republican...