Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) Elected 2003, 1st term up Dec. 2007
Born:	Nov. 12, 1952, Mt. Sterling
Home:	Lexington
Education:	U. of KY, B.S. 1974, M.D. 1984
Religion:	Baptist
Marital Status:	married (Glenna)
Elected  Office:	KY House of Reps., 1994-96; U.S. House of Reps., 1998-2003.
Military Career:	Air Force, 1974-80.
Professional Career:	Practicing physician, 1984-present; CEO, St. Joseph Medical Foundation, 1997-99.
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There is no question who ordinarily stands at the apex of Kentucky politics: The governor. The governor's appointment powers are wide: The legislature meets in regular session for only 60 days in even-numbered years and, since 2001, 30 days in odd-numbered years. After that, the governor can shift around line items in the state budget and call special sessions. But Kentucky's governor, Paul Patton, first elected in 1995, entered his final year as governor in 2003 under a cloud of scandal.

Patton is a Democrat from the eastern Kentucky coal fields. He grew up in Lawrence County on the West Virginia border in a house converted from a silo. He graduated from the University of Kentucky's College of Engineering, and ran a coal company from 1962 to 1978. He was deputy state Transportation secretary from 1979-80, chaired the state Democratic Party and in 1982 was elected judge-executive of Pike County, at the far eastern extremity of the state. In 1991 he was elected lieutenant governor and worked on a law granting tax credits to firms that create jobs. In 1995 he ran for governor and won the Democratic primary with 45% of the vote, with 24% for Secretary of State Bob Babbage and 21% for legislator John ''Eck'' Rose. In the general, he faced Republican Larry Forgy, who campaigned hard against the Kentucky Education Reform Act, passed in 1990 after the state Supreme Court outlawed school finance laws. Patton won 51%-49%, the Democrats' first major success in stalling Republican advances since Bill Clinton took office; Democrats all over the country took heart.

In his first years as governor, Patton took a conservative tack. When the Clinton administration threatened to regulate tobacco as a drug, Patton supported a lawsuit opposing the FDA rules, lit up a cigarette, and said he wouldn't support Clinton in 1996 if the FDA acted. He got a bipartisan majority to vote to reduce the cost of worker's compensation. This stirred great opposition in Patton's eastern Kentucky base and among the unions who had supported him strongly in 1995, but he refused to call a special session to change the law. In 1997, he called a special session to change the health care law passed in 1994, but no bill was passed. Patton had a high job rating in 1999, the first year in which a Kentucky governor could seek a four-year term. The little-known Republican candidate, publicist Peppy Martin, in an October debate charged that 80% of sheriffs and 30% of state police were "bootlegging hard drugs." Senator Mitch McConnell and state Senate Republican leader David Williams endorsed Patton. He won with 61% of the vote, to 22% for Martin and 15% for Gatewood Galbraith, an independent who backed legalization of marijuana. Patton carried 113 counties; the seven he lost were in eastern Kentucky, evidently because of anger over his worker's comp changes.

In his second term, Patton moved to the left. He tried to get major tax increases in 2000, but was stopped by the state Senate, in which Republicans had a 20-18 majority. Patton signed an early childhood development bill, funded by tobacco settlement money and designed by a commission headed by his daughter Nicki Patton. Worker's comp was liberalized in regards to injury claims, as Patton said he had gone too far in his 1996 law. Republicans held their state Senate majority in the 2000 election amid much bitter partisan dispute.

In early 2002 Patton seemed at the summit of his career; he became head of the National Governors Association in July and he was seen as a likely and formidable candidate against Senator Jim Bunning in 2004. Then, in September 2002, Tina Conner, owner of a nursing home in Hickman County, in the far western end of Kentucky, sued Patton for sexual harassment. She charged that when she had met the governor in 1997, he had fondled her and they began an intimate relationship; he appointed her to the state Institute on Aging and when she came to official meetings they would meet in a Louisville hotel. For two years, she said, that continued, and for two years more they had phone sex. She said she broke off the relationship in October 2001; after that, state inspectors came in and found serious violations, which resulted in the closing of the nursing home and its bankruptcy. At first Patton denied her charges, but when the Louisville Courier-Journal obtained phone records showing 440 calls from Patton's office to Conner's home and office, he admitted that they had had an "inappropriate personal relationship," but denied that he had used state government to retaliate. Not surprisingly this was the biggest Kentucky news story of the year. The state's two U.S. attorneys and state Attorney General Ben Chandler announced they were investigating. A few days after his confession Patton said, "I do not anticipate, in the foreseeable fuure, any involvement in the political process, including the U.S. Senate race." Republicans ran ads for the November legislative races urging voters to "stand up to Paul Patton and the scandals in Frankfort"; Patton's chief of staff had been indicted for violating campaign finance laws in the 1995 election. Patton spent the remaining months of 2002 and early 2003 confronting an expected $509 million shortfall between revenues and current spending; he sought an "open dialogue" with legislators of both parties, but in early 2003 Senate Republicans, with a 21-17 majority, seemed determined to oppose a major tax increase.

Meanwhile, candidates were lining up to run in the May 2003 primary. The state's public financing system, passed in 1992 and limiting spending to $1.8 million, was rendered moot when the state Senate refused to fund it. Republicans have not elected a governor since Louie Nunn won in 1967, but this time had hopes of winning. Despite a court challenge that successfully knocked his running mate from the race and another that unsuccessfully sought to keep him off the ballot, 6th District Congressman Ernie Fletcher easily won the Republican nomination with 57% over former Jefferson County Judge-Executive (the county and Louisville city governments were merged in 2003) Rebecca Jackson, state Representative Steve Nunn, Louie Nunn's son, and state Senator Virgil Moore. Chandler (grandson of former Governor and Senator Happy Chandler), who was unpopular with some insiders but popular with voters for his prosecution of Patton's chief of staff and two union leaders, narrowly won the Democratic nomination over state House Speaker Jody Richards. Chandler's running mate Charlie Owen, a businessman who had run self-financed unsuccessful campaigns for the House, the Senate and the governorship, can spend as much of his own money as he wants for the Chandler ticket.

Update: October 18, 2004
On November 4, 2003, Fletcher became the first Republican to win the Kentucky governorship since 1967. He won 593,058 votes, or 55 percent, while Democratic Attorney General Ben Chandler won 484,804 votes, or 45 percent.

Fletcher was sworn in as governor on December 9, 2003, and declared his 6th District congressional seat vacant the same day. The 6th District seat will be filled by the winner of a February 17, 2004, special election; Democrat Ben Chandler and Republican state Senator Alice Forgy Kerr have been selected as the party nominees in that contest.

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Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent
2003 general	Ernie Fletcher (R)	596,284	55%
2003 primary	Ernie Fletcher (R)	nominated by convention
90,912	57%
1999 general	Paul Patton (D)	352,099	61%
	Peppy Martin (R)	128,788	22%
	Gatewood Galbraith (Ref)	88,930	15%
	Other	6,934	1%
1999 primary	Paul Patton (D)	unopposed