6th District Kentucky House Race

This is the horse/house race to watch!

Ben Harris Chandler, the former Democrat Attorney General of Kentucky and recently defeated in his run for governor by Ernie Fletcher, is now running for Fletcher's old House seat in a special election scheduled for next Tuesday, Feb. 17th, and he appears to be winning!

The Lexington Herald Leader has now endorsed Chandler, lamenting the heavy importation of out-of-state Republican money, "a multimillion-dollar mudslide ... so repulsive that voters could hardly be blamed for ignoring Tuesday's special election."

The best that the Herald-Leader can find to say about Chandler's Republican challenger, Alice Forgy Kerr? "Kerr is a pleasant, well-meaning person who is way over her head in the Kentucky Senate. In six years in the legislature, her few accomplishments have come about when Republican leaders attached her name to a Democrat's bill. Nothing in her earlier experience qualifies her for Congress."

And if nothing else motivates Kentucky voters to pick Chandler, consider the baleful influence of U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell in the process: "McConnell, who hand-picked [Kerr] as GOP nominee, promised to 'do whatever it takes' to bury Chandler's political ambitions under an avalanche of Republican money. It's that mountain of money that's turned this campaign into the ugly, unintelligible muddle that it is."

McConnell, naturally, was a chief opponent of campaign finance reform and is married to Bush's Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao.