Washington Post  

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No wonder Beshear bounded into the Cadiz Restaurant on Main Street last week, all smiles and confidence, his tie knotted tightly and his penny loafers gleaming. A new statewide poll showed him with a 23 percentage-point lead over Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R), an ordained minister whose ethical challenges have merged in voters' minds with frustration over Republican leadership in Washington.

Beshear joked to an equally upbeat crowd that Fletcher is now called "the great unifier": unifying Democrats, Republicans and independents who want to throw him out.

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In this year's governor's race, Beshear's own search for a suitable Democratic contestant to face Fletcher led him back to himself. After losing a 1987 race for governor and a 1996 Senate race to McConnell, Beshear swears he had given up dreams of winning.

But when several prominent Democrats opted out, he opted in -- and soon won the May primary.

Republicans gave him a gift when Fletcher walloped Northup, who, after her defeat in 2006, ran in the GOP primary for governor. For Beshear, who presented a sobersided image of respectability and responsibility, Fletcher and his ethical problems offered a more generous target than Northup would have.

Although Fletcher campaigned in 2003 on a promise to end "good ol' boy politics" in the governor's mansion, he soon placed loyalists in state jobs meant to be based on merit. A grand jury called it an "illegal plan" and said "those who got in the way of the plan were fired or moved."

Fletcher declined to testify, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

When Fletcher and 14 aides were indicted, he pardoned the aides and made a deal with the Democratic attorney general, who dropped the charges against him in return for a signed admission that "the evidence strongly indicates wrongdoing by this administration." Fletcher signed but later dismissed the case as a "witch hunt."

The events gave a platform to Beshear. Just minutes into his talk in Cadiz, he said "honesty and integrity" are values that have been absent from the capital during Fletcher's four years in office. He spoke of the importance of "being responsible and accountable for ourselves."

"These are the kind of values that I grew up with, that you grew up with and that we're going to put back in the governor's mansion on November 6," Beshear said to a smattering of "amens."

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