Published: November 05, 2009 05:26 pm      

Back on the trail — 11/06/09

Election that wasn’t in state brings start of 2010 campaign

While Kentuckians watched from the sidelines while voters in Ohio, Virginia, New Jersey and other states went to the polls to vote Tuesday, Kentucky’s once-every-four-years break from constant campaigns ended just hours after the votes had been counted in other states.

Wednesday was the first day in which candidates could file for political offices up for grabs in 2010 and a surprising number of area candidates took advantage of that fact by being among the first to throw their hats into the ring. We suspect they will be joined by many others before the 4 p.m. Jan. 26 deadline for filing for most offices on the 2010 ballot.

Between now and then, we hope many well-qualified individuals who have never sought political office will decide to run. The more choices voters have — both in the May primary and in the November general election — the better the odds of the people electing good people to lead our state, cities and counties beginning in 2011.

In 2009, the only elections in Kentucky were to fill vacancies in the Kentucky General Assembly or to the decide whether to legalize alcohol sales in a handful of communities. But nearly every city and county elective office will be on the ballot in 2010, in addition to the U.S. Senate seat now held by Jim Bunning, who is not seeking re-election, and every seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Every seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives also will be on the 2010 ballot including the currently vacant one in the 96th District that will be filled in a December 8 special election in Carter and Lewis counties. State Senate seats in even-numbered districts also will be on the 2010 ballot including the 18th District seat won by Robin Webb, D-Grayson, in a special election in August.

Of course, while most of us in Kentucky had no opportunity to vote in 2009, the major candidates for Bunning’s Senate seat — Democrats Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo and Attorney General Jack Conway and Republicans Secretary of State Trey Grayson and Bowling Green ophthalmologist Rand Paul — have been on the campaign trail for months, and Gov. Steve Beshear has already announced that Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson will be his running mate in 2011.

While our hope is that voters will be given a choice of candidates in every race on the ballot in 2010, we know from experience that a number of incumbents will be unopposed. We recognize that the lack of opposition usually is because the incumbent is considered unbeatable, but we are naive enough to believe that democracy is best served when people are given a choice. Even the best public officials become more responsive to the people they serve when they have opposition. No opposition leads to complacency.

The people we will elect in 2010 will have a greater impact on our daily lives than any other elected officials. They will set our tax rates, decide which roads get paved, determine traffic patterns, decide where and when we can smoke, determine where we can park and do all sorts of things that directly impact us.

A representative can only be as good as the people who run for office, and frankly, there have been more than a few times in the last 20 or 30 years when we have disappointed in the overall quality of the candidates. We hope that is not the case in 2010. It’s too important.