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ONE-ON-ONE - July 2005
by Ed G. Lane
'Until Recently in Kentucky Government, It Was "Republicans Need Not Apply"'
Former gubernatorial candidate Larry Forgy talks frankly about Kentucky's political system
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Larry Forgy
Attorney Larry Forgy has been a part of Kentucky’s civic and political landscape for more than 35 years. He was the Republican candidate for governor in 1995, narrowly losing the race to Democratic candidate Paul Patton. He has been active on the board of directors/trustees for a variety of institutions, including the University of Kentucky, Georgetown College and the Kentucky Higher Education System. In addition to serving as budget director and chief counsel to Kentucky Governor Louie B. Nunn, Forgy has been a partner with the law firms of Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs in Louisville and Stoll, Keenon & Park in Lexington; Of Counsel with Frost, Brown & Todd in Lexington and the Sheffer Law Firm of Louisville; and served as the secretary’s representative for the U.S. Department of Labor-Region 5. He currently heads the Frankfort law office of L. Forgy & Associates, PLLC. |
Ed Lane: In 1995, you ran against Paul Patton for governor and lost the election by 21,560 votes of over 980,000 votes cast. Ten years have past. Has time changed your perspective on your gubernatorial campaign?
Larry Forgy: I’m more convinced today, than I was after the race, that the Patton campaign violated every law known to man except those requiring courage. Paul Patton didn’t beat me. The road monopoly in Eastern Kentucky beat me.
EL: Following the election, two of Patton’s aides – Andrew “Skipper” Martin and Danny Ross – and two officers of Teamster’s Local 89 – Lon Fields, Sr. and Bob Winstead – were indicted by a special grand jury. What was the final outcome of these indictments?
LF: They were pardoned by Governor Patton as he left the governor’s office. He had to either pardon Skipper or drown him, and he chose to pardon him. Skipper Martin knew where all of the bodies were buried.
EL: One of the concerns about Kentucky’s campaign finance legislation was that if a campaign cheated – overspent, diverted money, spent other’s funds outside the campaign – and the candidate won because of this improper activity, by the time a case went through the courts, the winner would have already served his/her term in office.
LF: That’s what happened in Kentucky – it was a failed experiment. The law allowed candidates to raise one-third and the state provided two-thirds of campaign funds up to a maximum of about $3 million. My thought – this legislation was “Maloneyism.” Senator Mike Maloney wrote it – he believed in experimentation on a number of matters, many of which a conservative would not follow. But, I ran with state funding because I thought it was better than trying to keep up with the Democratic Party at that time, which had almost a headlock on individuals who donated money because they had government contracts.
Bob Babbage brought about eight different campaign charges against me when he was Democrat Party chairman and all of them were essentially dismissed. That was an aside. The point is, the legislation didn’t work. The hope was that Kentucky could get the “big money” out of gubernatorial politics. The statute just failed.
EL: What were the key lessons you learned from your campaigns and what recommendations would you make to others running for higher office?
LF: I have learned that money is the diesel fuel that runs the big engine of politics, which is television. Without money, no matter how coherent your message may be, and no matter how appealing you might be as a candidate, you simply cannot beat money when it translates into television. Any candidate that thinks that he/she can win in Kentucky without adequate campaign financing just doesn’t understand the realities.
EL: Patton ended his second term with a tarnished reputation and low voter approval ratings. Would the situation have been different if you had been elected governor?
LF: Surely, I would have had more sense than to get involved in what Paul Patton got involved in. That’s not to say that any of us live at the foot of the cross our entire lives. There was something almost suicidal in Patton – there always was. Patton did not change when he became governor. The most important thing that I would have changed, had I been elected governor in 1995, would have been to stop what I believe is the biggest scandal in the history of the Commonwealth – road contracting in certain sections of this state.
I’m surprised there has not been a rebellion in Greater Louisville, central and western Kentucky with regard to the quality of their roads compared to the quality of the roads and the amounts of money that have been spent in Eastern Kentucky. I’m for everybody having roads, but I’m not for one region having all the new roads. As I said, if you look at the road improvements that haven’t been constructed, it all has to do with all the money being spent in one section of the state. I particularly refer to the $550 million that was spent on a 20-mile road from Pikeville to South Williamson.
EL: How would you solve what you call the “road monopoly” in Eastern Kentucky?
LF: There is no telling the extent to which the people of Kentucky have paid more, than they should have for road construction in certain sections of this state. When I was running for governor, I said I was not going to put the state in the asphalt business in Eastern Kentucky – that I was going to put the state in the limestone business. The monopoly is not on petroleum products, it’s on the limestone. I intended to set up a program where dead-heading coal trains going back into the mountains would have been filled with limestone and the limestone would be sold to all contractors at a competitive rate. If that had happened, the state would be paying a half to 40 percent less for asphalt in Eastern Kentucky compared to what we’re paying today.
It is a serious problem in Kentucky that somebody has to confront, at some point.
EL: How is the Fletcher administration managing these types of issues in the transportation department – putting road money where it is needed, not necessarily where it’s politically expedient.
LF: I hope our transportation department is not still in the hands of the road monopoly.
EL: Since your race for governor, what have you been doing for a living?
LF: I ran for the Supreme Court in 1999 and I ran into the money situation again. Other than that, I’ve been practicing law, which is pretty much what I’ve always done. I spent about seven months as the U.S. Secretary of Labor’s representative in Chicago, but that did not match my temperament.
EL: What law firm are you with now?
LF: I have my own – a small office in Frankfort. My firm provides insurance defense and I operate under a low profile.
EL: In addition to your law practice, you are currently affiliated with Health Kentucky.
LF: I’m the president of Health Kentucky.
EL: Health Kentucky helps uninsured Kentuckians who live below the poverty level to receive free prescriptions. How is the program performing?
LF: Last year Health Kentucky gave away $10 million worth of free medicine that was donated by six major pharmaceutical companies. Forty-one thousand people were assisted through KMA’s health network. Those individuals have to be between the ages of 18 and 64, can not be covered by any insurance, and must make less than the federal poverty determination, which is $18,000 for a family of four. KMA wants to help more uninsured people.
Instead of giving away $10 million worth of drugs to the working poor, I want to give away $30 million.
EL: What other health issues are facing Kentucky?
LF: I’m not a health care expert and I don’t purport to be on. I’ve always been a lawyer – coal, tobacco and defense. Helping people is a labor of love for me. Kentucky’s biggest problem – outside of the accelerated growth in the Medicaid budget – is its 530,000 uninsured individuals. Of that group, roughly a third are under 30 years of age and employed. I want to see those people buy insurance, because under the new bankruptcy law, if they have a major catastrophic ailment like a kidney transplant or a horrible car wreck that is not covered by insurance, they can no longer bankrupt it and loose themselves from that obligation. I’m working right now with Anthem and have obtained, I believe, approximately a $350,000 budget to go on the air with Governor Fletcher and others as spokespersons to say to young Kentuckians [that] you can buy a pretty good health insurance policy for about a third of what you pay for your car each month, and you ought to consider this.
It’s estimated by a Boston think-tank that one of every $12 for health care is paid because insured people cover those who refuse to insure. So, I want to get a substantial segment of these people to consider buying insurance.
EL: Recently patronage violations by the Fletcher administration relating to the state government’s merit system have been alleged by a “whistleblower” in the state highway department. How serious are these charges?
LF: What the Fletcher administration has done with regard to patronage is a drop in the bucket compared to what’s been done in Frankfort for the past 25 to 30 years. State government is caught up in the information age. Every time somebody made a contact it shows up on a computer and remains there. Attorney General Greg Stumbo is attempting to enhance his political career by raising this issue.
My observation has been that the term “merit system” is a misnomer. Basically, some of the state employees have “merit.” A bunch of insiders who wanted to control things have had the “system.” For example, I would say that for the past 12 to 15 years, Greg Stumbo probably has had the veto power over practically every state employee hired east of Mt. Sterling.
I know two or three people that are retired former supervisors. They worked for the Cabinet for Human Resources for 30 years and say they were never allowed to hire the person that they wanted for a job. It was always some “apple knocker,” like Stumbo, who would come in and say no, we’re going to hire this one. That has permeated Frankfort for years.
If you look at Stumbo’s and State Auditor Crit Luallen’s letters signing off on people that are hired or not hired, you can see that the Democrats tightly controlled the situation. There’s a doctrine in the law called “res ipsa loquitur,” which means “the thing speaks for itself.” In this case, the fact that over 92 percent of the state’s employees are Democrats speaks for itself.
Nobody got a job who wasn’t either a Democrat or willing to change to a Democrat – and the numbers are there.
EL: The Democrats are alleged to have had a patronage network covering every county in the state. Have you heard of that system?
LF: It’s as old as time itself. The charge by the newspapers that somehow or another Republicans giving recommendations on hiring is different is so full of hypocrisy that it would gag a maggot – it just wreaks of hypocrisy. The Democrats have done this for 30 years. They have maintained a certain amount of party regularity as a result of it and kept one party in power for 32 years.
EL: The two largest newspapers have editorially attacked the Fletcher administration for alleged political discrimination. Are these newspapers being fair and balanced?
LF: I know of no gubernatorial campaign in the past 35 years that didn’t campaign on “cleaning up government.” What we are now seeing, not only in Frankfort among what I would call the in-crowd of the Democratic Party but also these two large newspapers, is a manifestation of enormous resentment since they no longer control the main organ of patronage in this state. The Democrats and the big newspapers no longer are able to hold themselves out as the people who can get something done.
Let’s take the two newspapers. They can’t walk in with a welcome to any major office in this state except for Congressman Ben Chandler’s and Speaker of the House Jody Richard’s.
The governor’s office is essentially closed to them in terms of their influence and people like David Hawpe (editorial director and vice president – Louisville Courier-Journal) could chew nails because of that. Kentucky’s congressional delegation is closed to them except for one office. Most of the members of the Republican caucus – all of the members, as far as I know – just don’t have anything for either one of these major newspapers. And of course, Senate President David Williams has been personally attacked by the papers more than anybody else I know of. There is a reason for this. The papers saw the Democratic Party going down the slippery slope toward the loss of primacy in this state. They have enormous resentment for that and the first time they got a shot at Governor Ernie Fletcher, which is now, they have taken it.
I think the reasons for a lot of this are one, the newspapers are becoming irrelevant to the political process, and two, they’re unprofitable. If you are both unprofitable and unimportant, it makes you angry and that manifests itself in the attacks they are making. Over a period of time, newspapers will completely lose their credibility as a result of it.
EL: Senate President David Williams (R – Burkesville) is quoted as saying, “I’ve been politically active for 30 years. During those 30 years, I don’t know of any Republican that’s ever been hired in a state job in my counties.” What has been your personal experience regarding state hiring?
LF: I’m from Logan County in Western Kentucky down near Bowling Green – I can make the same statement about Logan, Butler, all of those counties down there. It was just accepted that our people need not apply. Like in the early 20th-century when signs said, “Irish need not apply,” until recently in Kentucky government it was, “Republicans need not apply.”
EL: What recommendations would you give anyone indicted regarding these alleged “merit system” charges?
LF: First of all, I’m not very popular with the “in crowd” that has controlled this state for 30 years. I am even less popular with what I call the “Highland mafia” that controlled Kentucky for eight years from 1995 to 2003. I have a legitimate reason to think that if they could hurt me they would. The state’s deputy attorney general said in the newspaper that he didn’t know what would happen as a result of the one letter I wrote promoting – oddly enough – a Democrat for non-merit position. But they referred that to the grand jury for prosecution. My thought is that if the Attorney General doesn’t ask for my indictment in Frankfort, that doesn’t assure me that somebody in some remote county in which Greg Stumbo has influence might indict me. I’d hate to face some grand juries in some parts of this state, as well as the one in Frankfort.
EL: I believe that Lieutenant Governor Steve Pence (R) quoted Tom Wolfe and said that “a good prosecuting attorney could get a ham sandwich indicted by some grand juries.”
LF: It’s true. I am controversial with certain elements of the Democrat Party, so it is not political sensitivity that makes me charge back at them. I have filed a lawsuit that says the merit system statute that Greg Stumbo is operating under is so vague that it’s unconstitutional. A statute has to be couched in such form that an individual can read it and understand with common sense what it says. A criminal statute is held to a triply high standard. A vague criminal statute violates the due process of law of the individual.
EL: What did you do that was of concern to the Attorney General?
LF: One letter of recommendation was written by me. The Attorney General, on two occasions, said that he didn’t quite know what was going to happen to me. Well, that raises enough of a specter that I have asked a federal court to say the statute is too vague and it’s not constitutional for that reason. It doesn’t stipulate what you have to do and must not do in its application, and therefore it’s unreasonable. If Federal Judge Joseph Hood, who sits in Frankfort, grants me the standing to raise this question, I’m convinced he’ll strike the statute down. Then the Kentucky Legislature is going to have to go back to the drawing board and come up with a statute that has some standards attached to it.
Who would want to be subjected to six months in jail by your political opponents? It would not be good. [laughter] We might see bumper stickers like “free Larry Forgy” instead of “free Nelson Mandela”.
EL: If you were an “average” citizen of Kentucky and asked to send a letter of recommendation on behalf of an individual applying for a merit job, should you be concerned about sending a recommendation?
LF: That’s the first question I’m going to ask Judge Hood when I appear before him: “Judge, do you think the average Kentucky citizen would write a letter or has the Attorney General’s investigation suppressed freedom of speech to the point that no one in their right mind would want to get into this morass?”
EL: The newspapers’ editorial writers have recently claimed the Fletcher administration has not hired enough women or minorities. If 92 percent of the people working in state government are Democrats, and registered voters and about 40 percent Republican and 45 percent Democratic in the state – does that mean that the governor would be obligated to hire more Republicans to overcome previous political discrimination by the Democrats?
LF: I’ve said for years that I thought a class-action lawsuit would lie on the part of some properly situated Republicans who had applied for office and were qualified and had not been heard. The class-action suit would basically say that they’re being deprived of the equal protection of the law under the 14th amendment.
EL: Do you predict the “merit system” charges will gain traction?
LF: I don’t hear anybody talking about it. It’s inside Frankfort and these newspapers. And as I’ve just said, the newspapers have lost their credibility.
EL: What will happen in the 2007 general election?
LF: Ernie Fletcher will be re-elected for two reasons. One, nobody has stolen any money; in the current flap, nobody has been killed. The merit system is the press’s “trumped-up” issue that the people of the state have got the common sense to see their way through. They’re also going to see that Governor Fletcher is trying to improve state government.
The Governor will likely attract money that previously has been contributed to the Democrat Party. I wouldn’t be surprised to see $12 to $14 million spent for Fletcher in the next election.
The Democrats don’t have a candidate nor the money. The people of this state are not going back to deep Southeastern Kentucky for another controversial candidate. Crit Luallen? The Patton connection is her mark of Cain. She can’t wash it off. I see Ernie Fletcher as enormously appealing and potentially even stronger than he is today.
EL: Are you running for any offices in the near future?
LF: No. Senator Alice Forgy Kerr’s (R-12th District) polling data (Forgy’s sister who ran for congress against Ben Chandler) showed that my ratings with the voters were in pretty good shape. But that’s only got to do with feeling good. I still have strong feelings about politics, but I can have those feelings without going out there and becoming an active candidate.
EL: Do you have a comment about your service to the University of Kentucky’s board of trustees?
LF: The University of Kentucky suffered an enormous loss of prestige and political clout with the higher education “reforms”.
When UK lost the community colleges, it lost a good solid 50 percent of its political support and the ability to compete with the University of Louisville and the regional institutions.
I don’t want to be “chicken little” – but I’m convinced the University of Kentucky will be put behind the eight ball. UK does not have the size of legislative delegation in Lexington to compete with the legislative delegation of the University of Louisville. Separating UK and the community colleges would not have happened had I won the governorship.
EL: Who is Governor Fletcher’s top appointment?
LF: I’m high on Stan Cave. He’s the best thing that’s happened to Governor Fletcher. The Governor has surrounded himself with people that are not on the take. Look at the people that he’s recruiting. Most of his staff resigned from significant careers to work for state government.
Ed G. Lane is chief executive of Lane Consultants Inc. and publisher
of The Lane Report.
edlane@lanereport.com
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