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Pence Deserves Respect and Gratitude

August 22nd, 2007

            Years from now, when historians sift through the sordid mess that was the Fletcher administration, one man will emerge from the murk and morass as a lone beacon of integrity and decency. You may remember him. His name is Steve Pence, the lieutenant governor whose unshakeable devotion to his principles would not let him be a party to deceit and dishonesty.

            Since declaring his independence from the Fletcherites, Pence has been a dead man walking in the state capitol building. His staff left him – some under pressure, some not – and the Fletcherites have treated him with not-so-benign neglect, hoping he would resign. But Pence has decided to stay the course, lonely though it may be.

Of even great importance to the citizenry, Pence resigned as Secretary of the Justice Cabinet, where he had spearheaded programs that effectively cracked down on meth labs and sex offenders, adding to his reputation as being a crusader for justice and against crime.

So what has he been doing the last six months?

“I go to

Frankfort at least four days a week,” Pence said. “I get a lot of invitations to a lot of events, and I try to help causes that I think are worthy. For example, the Salvation Army hopes to build a Boys Club in south

Louisville and it needs help from the state. I think that’s a worthy cause. It will impact more lives in a positive way than the arena.”

Before divorcing himself from the Fletcherites, Pence served as chairman of the Louisville Arena Task Force, a blue-ribbon group that included the likes of U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, then-U.S. Rep. Anne Northup, Papa John’s Pizza founder John Schnatter, University of Louisville Athletics Director Tom Jurich, Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, and others.

After months of public meetings, the group recommended to Fletcher that a new arena be built downtown at a cost of $199 million. Fletcher accepted its recommendations, disbanded it, and appointed an Arena Authority to be chaired by Jim Host, who had resigned his position as Secretary of the Commerce Cabinet.

Host, representing Fletcher, convinced Abramson that the arena should be built on LG&E property on the

Ohio River instead of the more mid-town site favored by Abramson, even though the state and city would have to pay LG&E $62 million to buy the property and move its equipment 30 yards.

And when the design for the arena was unveiled at a press conference earlier this week, Host, Abramson, and Fletcher were slapping each other on the back like a trio of long-lost brothers. But Pence, the man who had pulled the Task Force together and delivered the recommendation on schedule, was nowhere to be seen.

Which, of course, has been typical of Pence’s life since he broke with Fletcher and supported Northup against him in the Republican gubernatorial primary. To the Fletcherites, Pence is a traitor of the worst sort. But to many moderate Republicans, independents, and Democrats, he’s a hero for having the courage of his moral convictions, for putting principle above politics.

These days Pence tries to keep his own counsel. Everyday he feels the blast of arctic air from across the capitol building. But he’s not bitter and he’s definitely not even thinking about leaving the Republican Party.

“I support the Republican party and what conservatives have always stood for,” Pence said. “I’ll continue to do that. It never crossed my mind to switch parties. The party’s principles have not changed. It’s just that some leaders have strayed from them.”

Of all those close to Fletcher in the early months of the administration, only Pence supported a state referendum on casino gambling. He made the same arguments that Steve Beshear, the Democratic candidate for governor, is making in the current campaign.

Like Beshear, Pence was tired of seeing millions of

Kentucky dollars being spent in casinos based in our neighboring states. Like Beshear, Pence understood that the revenue from casino gambling could be used to improve education and help

Kentucky’s signature horse industry. Like Beshear, he felt the people should decide the issue instead of having a bunch of politicians decide it for them.

But Pence never could overcome the cadre of right-wing religious zealots that made up the Governor’s inner circle. They convinced Fletcher that the Republican “base,” especially in rural counties, opposed casino gambling on moral grounds. So Fletcher publicly remained on the fence until Beshear won the Democratic primary at least partly because he was the only candidate to unequivocally support a referendum on casino gambling.

Bingo! The Fletcherites had the issue they could use to (a) rally the most narrow-minded element of the Republican “base,” (b) smear Beshear, and (c) divert attention from the No. 1 campaign issue, the “culture of corruption,” to use a phrase employed by the Franklin County grand jury, that has existed in the Fletcher administration.

So far Pence has stayed out of the campaign, except for holding fund-raisers for Republicans such as Erwin Roberts, the former Secretary of the Personnel Cabinet who plans on challenging John Yarmuth for his U.S. House seat next year.

“But I still believe we need a referendum on casino gambling,” he said. “There’s no secret about how I feel about that. But my goal is to not be critical of the Governor, any more than I already have. People are aware of how I feel about the pardons and his legal defense fund.”

When the possibility of wrongful hiring practices in the State Transportation Cabinet first came to light in May, 2005, Fletcher promised that he would investigate and deliver the “untarnished truth” to the public. Taking the Governor at his word, Pence became the administration’s leading spokesman on the issue, promising repeatedly that the administration would get to the truth, make corrections, and abide by the law.

“I was the first one out of the box in the Governor’s defense,” said Fletcher in a March interview with The Courier-Journal. “I said at the first news conference when the Governor was overseas (in

Japan), ‘We are going to get to the bottom of this. This governor gets it when it comes to integrity and stopping this ‘good-ol’-boy system.’ The Republican Party, the people who were out campaigning in 2003, we went from place to place, saying we were going to change the culture in

Frankfort.”

He put his credibility on the line, in other words, and that was no small thing, considering the “Mr. Clean” reputation that Pence had earned as a federal prosecutor during the infamous “BOPTROT” scandal of the early 1990s.

That reputation, in fact, was the main reason Fletcher picked Pence to be his runningmate after his original pick, Hunter Bates, had to take himself off the ticket because he didn’t meet the state’s residency requirements. Fletcher needed a runningmate with unquestioned integrity. And, of course, it didn’t hurt the Pence was from

Louisville, giving the ticket some geographical balance.

All was going well in the wake of the merit-system jolt until the day Pence was told to stop talking about the “unvarnished truth.” He was told that message was no longer operative. Instead, the Fletcherites had decided to stonewall and go on the attack against Greg Stumbo, the Democratic Attorney General who was running the grand-jury investigation of the alleged merit-system hiring violations.

Shaken, Pence was still trying to figure out what to do when he learned, in August of 2005, that Fletcher planned to issue a blanket pardon covering everybody who might have been involved or indicted in the merit-system scandal, except himself. In an incredible act of defiance and indecency, Fletcher announced the pardons to a cheering throng of supporters in the capitol rotunda.

“To make that a rallying cry, where you not only say I’m going to do it, but I’m going to celebrate doing it…that is when I think the real fracture began. We had said during the campaign that pardons like that would never be issued in a Fletcher-Pence administration. It got worse after that.”

It got worse when Fletcher was indicted by the grand jury and took the Fifth Amendment instead of testifying. In the spring of 2006, Pence resigned as Secretary of the Justice Cabinet and announced he would not seek re-election on a ticket with Fletcher. Some of his supporters encouraged him to take on Fletcher in this year’s primary, but Pence declined.

When he came out in support of Northup, Pence was critical of Fletcher for having a criminal defense fund to help him cover his legal expenses. The Governor so far has refused to reveal who has contributed to the fund so the public and media won’t be able to see if any of the contributors have received special treatment from the administration.

Since Fletcher’s unsurprising win over Northup in the primary, Pence has tried to quietly carry out the duties of his office with as much dignity as possible under the circumstances. He’s working with the national Lieutenant Governors Association on some issues concerning aviation and cancer awareness.

“I’ve talked with the Governor twice in the last two months,” Pence said. “I’m orbiting in a different sphere. It’s no secret we have significant differences. But both of us have tried to be cordial and professional.”

On both a personal and professional level, Pence has only good things to say about Beshear, and vice-versa. They go back a long way. It was Beshear who gave Pence his first prosecutor’s job when Beshear was state Attorney General from 1979 through ’83 in the administration of Gov. John Y. Brown Jr.

“After Steve (Pence) came into the office as an Assistant Attorney General, I quickly recognized what a fine addition he was to our team,” Beshear said. “Steve always has demonstrated very high ethical standards which I have admired about him throughout his career.”

Pence will leave state government with his reputation intact and his conscience clear. He plans to go back into private law practice and see what the future brings. He lived up to his oath of office and put the right thing ahead of the political thing. For that, he deserves the gratitude of honorable Kentuckians from both parties.

 

 

Entry Filed under: Fletcherism, Business, Casinos