Snitch interviewed all three candidates for the position of Kentucky Attorney General, the top law enforcement position in the Commonwealth.
The interview was conducted last Sunday by staff writer Caleb O. Brown.
What courtroom experience do you have?
No one has more courtroom experience than me and Gatewood. I’ve got 10 years of prosecuting experience. When I was an assistant county attorney, we had 30 cases a day. Gatewood probably only works one or two cases a day when he’s in court. I’m the one with experience in this race.
Qualifications over Stumbo and Galbraith?
We’ve all been attorneys for about the same amount of time. Their time has been spent as defense attorneys. My job has been a prosecutor and as a district judge. As a judge I had to weigh the evidence. If a person was found guilty, I had to pass sentence in order to ensure compliance.
As a prosecutor, we had to investigate the case, apply the applicable law to it and present this evidence to a judge or a jury. We had to convince them that a person was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. We also had to be a part of the sentencing process and we made sure that the sentence was complied with.
With my 14 years of experience as a judge or a prosecutor — which has been paid for by the taxpayers of Kentucky — that means after I’m sworn into office, I can be prosecuting in the courtrooms of Kentucky. My two opponents will either be in school learning how to be a prosecutor, or worse, they’ll be getting on-the-job training.
You have to have an outlook because you’re the chief law enforcement officer of the state, you’re the head of the law department for the state. You’re also head of the crime victims association for the state.
One of my opponents has exhibited his defense attorney mentality. Greg Stumbo wrote a letter on behalf of one of his former employees — Kent Downey — who was convicted on prostitution and gambling charges, of running those procedures out of his office. As the chief law enforcement officer of this state, you won’t see me writing a letter on behalf of someone who exploits women in that manner, asking a judge to set a lenient sentence. We need to be setting a standard. There will be plenty of people asking for leniency; that’s the defense attorney’s job. It’s the prosecution’s job to see that the proper sentence is imposed to get compliance and to show that this not a crime that is acceptable in the state.
Your opponents have made OxyContin and methamphetamine abuse problems priorities should they win.
Both of my opponents have a drug plan. I have a drug plan. Gatewood Galbraith proposes that we file a lawsuit similar to the tobacco lawsuit filed by the states. I think that’s a good step, but it’s not the only thing, it’s part of the process. I think he’s right because I think the pharmaceutical companies set out to do exactly what they did, and I don’t think their motives were pure.
But that will take two to seven years. And we have to depend on a jackpot jury to award that much to us. We can proceed with that while we go ahead with my plan.
Mr. Stumbo has a drug plan called the KBI. The problem with that is he wants a new bureaucracy that he will be the head of. He wants law enforcement officers under his direct control.
The problem is that we have state police who are retiring. They are our most seasoned officers. The money is there, but they’re not being replaced by even the newest recruits. We need more manpower on the streets so that we can attack this problem.
The other problem is funding. He wants to fund this with a new tax on cigarettes. He wants to add $1.50 to a carton of cigarettes. He says he wants to make pushers pay, but this is a tax on law-abiding people who are engaged in a legal activity. He wants to punish farmers who grow it, merchants who sell it and users who use it.
If you want to make pushers pay, you need to go after the assets of pushers, the distributors and the manufacturers. Let’s attack their property, both civil and real, and their bank accounts.
My plan is three parts. We’ve got to eradicate, educate and rehabilitate.
I propose we fund our law enforcement all the way down to the city and county levels. We go after the suppliers, distributors and manufacturers. We close them down.
When you have somebody who is more afraid of not getting their drug than getting put in jail or fined, then we’ve got a problem. We have to rehabilitate. We can go to the private sector; we can use faith-based options. We can increase our drug court participation.
The third thing is educate. We can’t afford to lose another generation of Kentuckians to drugs. I don’t care how many factories you have sitting in that community, if that labor force has lost its will to get up and go to work and perform their services for a Friday night paycheck, it’s not going to work. Those factories will have to close and go elsewhere.
In Kentucky, the average drug user spends about $60,000 a year to support their drug habit. Most people don’t make that. Once they’ve quit their job and sold their property, they’ve got to get money. What are they going to do? They turn to crime.
Now, capital cases go up, domestic violence goes up, people stop paying their child support. We have farmers in Western Kentucky who go out to get their anhydrous ammonia and find that it’s stolen because it’s an ingredient in methamphetamine.
I propose that we expand our DARE programs, and we’ve got to talk to young people about drug addiction.
Your pay was suspended twice as a district judge. Can you speak to that?
In Kentucky, any candidate for judicial office has to run under what is called the Judicial Canons of Ethics. There are many lawyers and judges who think those canons of ethics are too strong, too restrictive.
A similar canons of ethics, I believe, is in Minnesota. A judge brought an action saying that it was a restriction of his right of free speech. A judge upheld it. It’s now before the Supreme Court for review.
Mr. Stumbo, myself and Gatewood, if we were running under those canons of ethics, we would all have been suspended because we have all made comments that would not be permitted. All you can really say as a judicial candidate is that you’ll be fair and impartial.
In my first campaign for judge, I ran against an incumbent. My campaign committee did a poll in the four-county area. The results were that three of the four counties would vote for me. My committee ran an ad to that effect. After I defeated the incumbent judge and carried those three counties, a complaint was filed by someone.
The judicial commission decided that we hadn’t used a professional polling group. We admitted to that, that we had done it all in-house. They said that brought some sort of disrespect upon the judiciary. They suggested I take responsibility for this, since I was the candidate and I was responsible for everything my committee did. I agreed to that. It was a 10-day suspension of pay. I learned from it.
The other instance occurred when you set what was called an unreasonably high bond. Is that right?
No. What happened there was that my campaign committee ran an advertisement saying that I had been nominated for judge of the year. My brother, who was a practicing attorney in the community, made the nomination. They said that shouldn’t have happened. They said that my committee should not have made that nomination, even though my brother was qualified to make the nomination. Once again, they suggested a suspension of pay. The important thing to mention is that this was all pay. None of this was about judicial abilities.
You were suspended as an assistant county attorney.
That’s an interesting thing. Stewart Media Group, which is running Greg Stumbo’s media operations, filed an open records request with the Jefferson County Attorney’s office. Back came this letter — I know because I have a copy of it — which wasn’t signed at the bottom. It was just initialed at the top. I don’t remember having pay suspended. I don’t remember receiving this. My superiors at the time don’t remember this. This letter that they have wasn’t signed off on by myself, saying that I’ve seen it. It wasn’t signed off on by the county attorney at the time, Mike Conliffe.
The other interesting thing about that. Do you remember when the commonwealth attorney got his speeding ticket dismissed?
There were three county attorneys in that case. No one remembered doing it, but The Courier-Journal filed an open records request because they said they remembered one of those county attorneys having been suspended for the same activity. The report that came back to The Courier-Journal was, “We don’t keep records as far back as 1996.” But this letter was dated 1991. All of a sudden they don’t keep records back for Democratic prosecutors, but now they keep them back for Republicans?
One of the things I’d like to point out here. Ray Stewart and his media group, they’ve got to be some of the most unethical people in the media business. You remember back in the May primary where an advertisement was run in Eastern Kentucky and it was nicknamed the “naked PVA ad”?
Ray Stewart was the one who promoted that, produced it and put it on the air. Now Greg Stumbo has hired this individual to run his media. I think the people you employ and the people you put in your service speaks to what kind of public official you will be.
