Below is a preview of the Sept. 25, 2015 edition of Kentucky Roll Call. To read the actual story and names, go to the link in the next column — bottom right.
‘The Story’ of the 2015
Republican primary for governor was a political thriller that would make a
compelling movie.
An ex-girlfriend accuses a
major candidate for governor of domestic violence, of abusing her physically
and emotionally, claiming in a letter to the state’s largest newspaper, “Did
[he] hit me? Yes,” and that he drove her to Louisville for an abortion. The
accused denies it all.
Rumors of the alleged abuses had
spread on the campaign trail for more than a year, but were never seen in print
until 21 days before the election, when e-mails, preciously exchanged between the
husband of a rival candidate’s running mate and a blogger, were leaked to the state’s
second largest newspaper. The leak came from an unlikely source not identified
at the time, and remained a mystery until nearly four months after the
election, in a story Kentucky Roll Call broke.
Oddly, the leak came from the
camp of the candidate who was accused of domestic abuse, raising the question,
“Why would he fan a negative?” But there was logic in the decision — potential
benefits in multiple ways, including: (a) it vented the issue by obeying the political
adage that you put a negative out front and chase it, as compared to it chasing
you; (b) it would discredit a major rival; and (c) plant doubt in the voters’
minds about the veracity of the abuses, that maybe the political rival
connected to the e-mails created the abuses as a rumor.
The plot thickens: someone
hired a pricey private eye in New York City to investigate (intimidate) the
ex-girlfriend, who now lives in the Big Apple. The message to her being, keep
your mouth shut or your parents will find out about the abortion.
Did a Democrat outfox the
Republicans by orchestrating the leak in order to clear the path for the Republican
nominee the Democrats’ preferred as their opponent in the general election? There
appeared to be reasons to believe so.
The e-mails were stolen by dark
means. But by whom, and how did they end up, allegedly, in the hands of a lobbyist
who sneaked them to the reporter in an elaborate and calculated scheme.
The reporter unwittingly fell
for the scheme and wrote a story that would knock the e-mail-connected rival out
of the race. And, as planned, once the reporter’s story came out, the accused
would call a press conference and deny everything, and he had plenty of time to
prepare answers to the questions. A nice scheme, or so it seemed!
Once the ex-girlfriend read
the blanket denials, which made her out to be a liar, she decided to tell her
side of story to the state’s largest newspaper. Her decision was the tipping
point of the accused’s campaign. Throughout the remaining 16 days of the
election, the big-city paper ran story after story, turning the ill-gotten
e-mails and alleged abuses into ‘The Story’ of the 2015 gubernatorial primary, dooming
the chance of her ex-boyfriend to be governor. He lost by 83 votes.
