Sherry Chandler

Gubernatorial primary

No runoffs.

I’m not sure what to make of Fletcher’s win in the Republican primary. Politial analysis is not my forte. Could be that Northup doesn’t play well outside the Louisville metropolitan area that she once represented in the U.S. Congress. Maybe, after the death of her son last year, she is still off her game. Or maybe it really was all those millions of dollars of highway money that Fletcher handed out around the state just before the primary.

Here is some analysis from Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball (via Political Wire):

Fletcher’s 50 percent may appear more impressive than Beshear’s 41 percent, but looks are deceiving. There were only three GOP candidates, and the third, Billy Harper, was a minor force. Moreover, about half of his own party voted against Fletcher for renomination–an extraordinarily high total for the first Republican Governor since Louis Nunn served from 1967-1971. Northup’s second major defeat in six months stings the state party’s anti-Fletcher faction, which had been led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell behind the scenes. Northup trounced Fletcher 2 to 1 in the Louisville media market, but the region accounted for less than 30 percent of the GOP primary vote, and she languished at 26 percent in the rest of the state. She posted even poorer percentages in Northern Kentucky, home of her major public endorser, junior Sen. Jim Bunning.

Also from Kos, who points out that only 36% of the turnout was Republican (202,131 of 550,890 votes or, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader 21% of the population), of which only 36.5% voted for Northup:

The vaunted McConnell “machine” could only scrape 36.5 percent against an indicted, unpopular governor? Hilarious!

Meanwhile, Central Kentucky’s perenniel candidate Gatewood Galbraith did pretty well in his home counties:

Galbraith got some happy numbers, such as when returns showed he won Nicholas County, where he was born. He finished second to Steve Beshear in Fayette County, with 16 percent of the vote.

And Bluegrass Reports says he finished ahead of Jody Richards (Speaker of the Kentucky House) in Franklin.

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