Runoff nixed — 04/16/08

Fri, May 16 2008

— On the next to the last day of the 2008 General Assembly, lawmakers took a few minutes to complete work on House Bill 370, a bill that eliminates gubernatorial runoffs in Kentucky.
Not that there has ever been a gubernatorial runoff, mind you. Since the approval of the law establishing the runoff in the 1980s, the nominees for governor in each party have received enough votes in the primary election to avoid a runoff.
Since House Bill 370 — which originally involved relatively minor changes in the requirements for filing for office but was amended to include the elimination of gubernatorial runoffs — was approved by both the House and Senate with only one dissenting vote, one wonders why the bill was not approved and sent to the governor until the 59th day of the 60-day session. This proposal had such broad support among both Democrats and Republicans that it could have been enacted early in the session and sent to Gov. Steve Beshear weeks ago.
Of course, there is absolutely no reason why House Bill 370 had to be enacted this year. The governor’s office will not be on the ballot until 2011. Bills to eliminate the gubernatorial runoff could have been enacted in 2009 or 2010.
The law requiring a runoff election between a party’s top two candidates for governor if no candidate receives at least 40 per cent of the vote in the primary was enacted after several Democratic candidates for governor — among them Martha Layne Collins and Wallace Wilkinson — received their party’s nomination without receiving 40 percent of the vote.
However, since enactment of the law, the winner of each party’s gubernatorial primary has received 40 percent of the vote, making the runoff unnecessary. However, when local election officials feared that there would be a gubernatorial runoff in both parties in 2007, they complained that local government had no funds to pay for the added election. Thus, the elimination of the runoff has as much to do with money as with politics.