“The beat goes on. The beat goes on.
La de da de de, la de da de da.”
-Congressman Sonny Bono

The prevailing wisdom is that Governor Fletcher should drop his bid for reelection and do something else with his life.

Admittedly, Governor Fletcher is having a difficult time. In fact, I have just written a book called The Unbridled World of Ernie Fletcher, which chronicles some of his miscues and mistakes.

Fletcher is a known quantity. The people thinking about running against him are not. It's unlikely his distant past will come back and bite him.

Of course,  his recent history has not been a bed of roses.  

Some of the Democrats like Chandler and Mongardo have been through the campaign meat grinder but none of Fletcher’s potential Republican opponents have had   an intense, statewide, vetting.

Candidates for minor constitutional offices, the state legislature, or even congress, do not go under the microscope the way someone running for governor does.

Before running Fletcher out of town on a rail, Republicans might think back to 1991.

In 1991, Congressman Larry Hopkins was the choice of the Republican establishment and looked like he had a really good chance to be Governor. 

Larry Forgy, (yes, THAT, Larry Forgy) challenged Hopkins for the Republican nomination. Forgy narrowly lost, 51% to 49%, even though Hopkins outspent him four to one.

Although the defeat started a string of Forgy’s  political losses, from Governor, to Supreme Court and recently the Republican Party central committee, 1991 was Forgy's finest hour.  Forgy was able to position himself as the outsider taking on the establishment.

Even more importantly, Forgy found serious discrepancies with Hopkins’s resume concerning Hopkins education and military record.  After the hard fought primary, Hopkins was sunk. His campaign stumbled into the general election where Hopkins lost by what was then the largest margin in Kentucky history.

I don't know if the people thinking about running for Governor have any skeletons in their closet.  They may not.   If they have ever lied about anything, have a backstreet lover, cheated on their taxes, been involved in any unusual business activities, or have friends or relatives who might embarrass them, I would recommend they confess it now or forget about running for Governor.

In a race for governor, every peccadillo is going to be analyzed, scrutinized, and made into a thirty-second television commercial.  It is better to have the bad news on the table early.

Vetting candidates now will allow the Republican establishment to look at Fletcher and see if they really do want to throw him overboard.  He may not look so bad after the other possibilities are put through the meat grinder.

The worst possible Republican  scenario would be to throw Fletcher overboard, put their eggs in a new basket and have this year’s version of Tina Conner be in the new  basket.

Cincinnati Post Managing Editor Mark Neikirk nailed it perfectly when he said that Fletcher political career is very ill, not dead.

Neikirk urged Fletcher to make some bold moves, show some bi-partisanship in naming people to his cabinet, and fix the merit system once and for all.

If Fletcher does that, he might get the state to focus on the important issues facing it and raise his popularity at the same time.   

I’ve been urging Fletcher to be bold for a long time now.  It has not happened.  He seems too wrapped up in self pity.  

There is hope that Fletcher is coming around.  He  recently sang karaoke at an event in Frankfort.   When he was running for Governor, he and I both participated in a  karaoke event  in Richmond.  Everyone enjoyed watching a Congressman sing like the rest of us. He won several people over that night.

For my karaoke, I dedicated my section of “I’ve Got You Babe” to Fletcher as Sonny Bono had also been a Republican congressman. 

Sonny was elected because  people knew him and Sonny did not take himself too seriously.

Like Sonny, Fletcher is a known quantity. If he can focus on the big issues and not take himself too seriously, the beat might go on for an unbridled second term.

La de da de de, la de da de da.

Don McNay is the author of “The Unbridled World of Ernie Fletcher”, which will be in bookstores later this year.  You can write to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or read other things he has written at www.donmcnay.com.  His award winning column is syndicated on the CNHI News Service.  He is on the Board of Directors for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.