Bill Straub: Democrats barely offer a fight in 1st District as GOP dominates Congressional race

WASHINGTON – The First Congressional District in far western Kentucky, so far to the left on a road map that it almost falls into the Mississippi River, was once one of the most reliable Democratic regions in the entire country.

No more. And its geographic position is the only thing that can be considered to the left in the commonwealth.

The district, formerly the breeding ground of folks described as “yellow dog Democrats,’’ can now better be viewed as the Rick Pitino of political subdivisions. The veteran basketball coach, you’ll remember, ventured from the Big Blue of the University of Kentucky to the red of the University of Louisville, forever drawing the enmity of Wildcat fans.

Well, the First District also has gone from blue to red, ditching a Democratic Party that dominated local politics for decades and produced some of the commonwealth’s most noteworthy politicians of the 20th Century – folks like legendary Vice President Alben Barkley of Paducah, former governor and senator Earle Clements of Morganfield and, of course, A.B. “Happy’’ Chandler, of Corydon – in favor of the Republican Party in the concluding decades of the 20th Century.

The First District incredibly provided President Obama with a mere 32.1 percent of the vote in 2012. There was a time not that long ago when Republicans didn’t even bother to contend in many regions of the district, making the speed at which voters flipped from the party of Jefferson to the GOP all the more remarkable.

It’s been more than 20 years since the First District congressional seat was held by a Democrat and there’s no reason to think that lack of fortune is going to end anytime soon. Sam Gaskins, a Marine and Army veteran from Hopkinsville with no political experience, is the lone Democrat seeking the seat in the May 17 primary.

There are reasons aplenty for the transformation. The district has always had a decidedly conservative bent, particularly on social issues like abortion and guns, and is decidedly more rural than the nation as a whole. As the Democratic Party turned more liberal and urban, many folks went looking for a political party that better reflected their views.

It didn’t help that Carroll Hubbard Jr., a Democrat who held the seat from 1975 to 1993 wound up serving two years in prison for federal campaign finance law violations and also was involved in the House banking scandal during his tenure on Capitol Hill. His successor, Tom Barlow, who was and is a fine gentleman, didn’t possess the dynamism required of a federal office holder and he served only two years – the last Democrat to hold the seat.

But those weren’t the only reasons for the metamorphosis. It’s no secret that the Republican Party is increasingly becoming the party of white folks, particularly white men, and lord knows there’s a ton of Caucasian votes to be harvested in Kentucky’s First Congressional District, which the Census Bureau reports is 90.4 percent white. That compares to 77.7 percent for the nation as a whole.

There are pockets of African-Americans in the district, in places like Paducah, Fulton County and Hoptown, where almost one-third of the residents are black. But spots like Marshall County, which at one time was reputed to have no black citizens living within its borders and today is 98.57 percent white, are more representative of the district as a whole. Latinos, the fastest growing sector of the U.S. population, constitute only 1.5 percent of the total.

Democrats also have been affected by organized labor’s loss of influence. Unions once held significant sway in the district. J.R. Gray, of Benton, a union advocate who served as former Gov. Steve Beshear’s first secretary of labor, was a potent presence during his tenure as a state representative during the 1980s.

But that influence waned as factories moved out, some of them destined for overseas. The coup de grace came in 2007 when German-based Continental Tire closed its huge plant near Mayfield, a move that carried significant impact on the local economy.

All of that has benefited Republicans, and no one has benefited more than Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, who has spent most of his 22 years in Washington following that grand, old, Kentucky tradition of shilling for the coal industry, laboring assiduously to undermine the Obama Administration’s ongoing efforts to clean the nation’s air and waters, protect asthmatic children from noxious emissions and address the obvious dangers of global climate change.

Like most of the folks he has served in Congress, Whitfield is a former Democrat, serving as such in the state legislature in the early 1970s, making the switch at the behest of kingmaker, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Louisville, to take on and ultimately defeat Barlow in 1994. As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Whitfield has devoted most of his time in recent years to killing the president’s Clean Power Plan intended to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.

Since arriving in Washington, records show, Whitfield has reaped, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, $769,815 in campaign contributions from the utility industry, $563,097 from oil and gas interests and $334,477 from the mining sector.

Not a bad little haul.

Whitfield has been careful to avoid positioning himself as a global climate change denier. But his votes do all the talking. The League of Conservation Voters has given him a dismal lifetime score of 13 percent on environmental issues – 6 percent in 2015. In 2014, he voted in support of the Secret Science Reform Act, aimed at crippling the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to use the best available science in establishing public health safeguards.

If he’s not a denier, he’s certainly an agnostic.

Regardless, Whitfield has mercifully decided to call it a career. His decision might have something to do with a House Ethics Committee probe into whether he improperly aided the lobbying work of the firm employing his wife, Connie Harriman-Whitfield, in behalf of the Humane Society Legislative Fund.

It seems the Office of Congressional Ethics found that Whitfield’s office helped set up “as many as 100 meetings” for his wife’s organization and that he conducted joint meetings with her to promote organization’s legislative priorities.

Imagine that.

So, with Western Kentucky Democrats barely registering any interest in competing for the open slot, the likely successor will emerge from the Republican primary where former state Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, of Tompkinsville, who last year finished within 85 votes of capturing the GOP gubernatorial nomination that instead went to Gov. Matt Bevin (heaven help us) is considered the favorite.

One internal poll conducted for the Comer reportedly had him ahead by about 30 points. He hails from the eastern part of the district which also is the most heavily Republican, something that is expected to work in his favor.

But Comer has baggage — a former girlfriend alleged during the gubernatorial primary that he abused her. In a letter to the Courier-Journal of Louisville, the woman related that her relationship with Comer was “toxic” and “abusive.”

Comer denied the allegations, continues to do so, but it likely had an impact on his effort.

Then there’s Mike Pape, of Hopkinsville, who was Whitfield’s district director for 21 years and carries the retiring lawmaker’s endorsement. Pape is running – without irony, mind you – as an outsider, foisting the same scam on the voting public that has worked so well thus far for Donald Trump.

Pape is running so hard to the right he’s making Ted Cruz look like Saul Alinsky. He has produced what universally is regarded as the worst campaign ad in a political season that reached historic proportions for terrible campaign ads. His spot, which walks the fine line between obnoxiousness and racism, depicts three men, apparently meant to be Latinos, one with an awful mustache, cutting through a chain-link fence that is supposed to represent the barrier along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Of course the three comic book Latinos are discussing Republican politics as they enter the U.S. vowing to stop Trump from building the wall across the border when one offers that Pape must also be stopped. As an extra added bonus, the soon-to-be undocumented worker asserts Pape will also work with Cruz to end Obamacare.

“Vamonos!’’ declares one as the meander through to rape, pillage and keep Pape from building a wall.

“There’s no one who’ll stop me from standing up for you,’’ Pape declares.

Comer has been endorsed by the National Rifle Association and the Chamber of Commerce, leading Pape to dismiss the support as “the establishment’’ getting behind its candidate, sounding for all the world like a drug-addled hippie in a bad 1960s movie.

Quite a campaign. But there’s speculation that the god-awful ad might actually help Pape in a district where more than nine out of every 10 residents are white and people of color are viewed with concern.

And this is what the Republican and Democratic parties are offering the public in the year 2016. No wonder everybody’s mad.

Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. A member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, he currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.