DEMOCRATS TRIPPING OVER THEIR OWN FEET

Spend a week battling an erratic golf swing in the hills of North Carolina,
and you come back to Kentucky to find a couple of major players have hung
big targets on themselves. And I'm not talking about local politics in Clay
County.

If I'm an attorney general with a famous name, a clean reputation and a
presumptive lead in the race for the 2003 Democratic gubernatorial
nomination, I'm not sure I would be bragging about being the favored
candidate of one of the state's major highway contractors.

Mind you, there's nothing inherently wrong with Leonard Lawson backing Ben
Chandler. Like the rest of us, Lawson is free to give his support -- and
his campaign contributions -- to the candidate of his choice.

It just seems that by needlessly talking up an endorsement from a state
contractor, Chandler has provided his opponents an opportunity to tar his
carefully cultivated Mr. Clean image with a "politics as usual" brush.

Similarly, if I'm a sitting Democratic governor with a U.S. Senate gleam in
my eye, I doubt that I knowingly would pick someone with a drug conviction
on his record to be my party's state chairman.

That's no knock against Jerry Johnson, the longtime ally Gov. Paul Patton
chose to succeed daughter Nicki Patton in running the state Democratic
Party. To Johnson's credit, he freely acknowledged his 1982 conviction for
cocaine possession when he joined the Patton administration in 1995.

And Johnson's career since that conviction strongly suggests that his life
should not be defined by one youthful mistake.

But you have to wonder what Patton was thinking when he picked Johnson to
head the Democratic Party -- particularly at a time when literal drug wars,
with real guns and bullets and bodies, are popping up around the state.

By doing so, he handed Republicans a whip they can use not only against him
in 2004 but also against every other Democratic candidate in the state.

Gee, and the prevailing thought around Frankfort was that a new state
chairman might help the Democratic Party stop the bleeding.

Under Kentucky campaign finance laws, a would-be governor's "exploratory
committee" can raise and spend $90,000 this year to check out the viability
of a full-blown 2003 campaign.

Last week, the media consultant for Chandler's exploratory committee
cheerfully reported that, before his candidate fully geared up his
fund-raising activities, the whole $90,000 and more had rolled in from past
contributors and supporters.

Bill Fletcher, of Fletcher and Rowley in Nashville, said Chandler had to
return $30,000 in contributions and had to cancel fund-raising plans that
were expected to produce another $40,000.

Maybe it was that Lawson endorsement.

If all these exploratory committees do a thorough, honest job of assessing
their candidates' chances of getting elected and if the candidates' egos
don't cause them to turn a deaf ear to those honest assessments, the
gubernatorial field will be considerably smaller come late January.

Right now, the field is inflated by big dreams that have no chance of
coming true.

A perfect mayor for Lexington would have Jim Gray's vision, Ann Ross'
candor, Teresa Isaac's passion and Scott Crosbie's ability to make a
killing on real estate deals. If the Urban County Government could buy and
sell property as profitably as Crosbie did with his home, there might be no
need for local taxes.

Vote Tuesday. It validates your right to complain about your government for
the next few years.