This past Tuesday was exciting in the House because the gaming bill HB 550 was voted on in the Elections, Constitutional Adm and Intergovernmental affairs committee and was not passed with Dottie Sims being the final swing vote to overrule the bill. The Democrats had split and a faction between them was arising as seen in the Divide and Descent book between Clements and Happy Chandler. This time the faction was Representative Stumbo against speaker of the House Jody Richards. Their fight is part of Kentucky’s Political Culture focusing on the Individualistic of pursuing their own political goals and self-interests. The fight is over power, since Speaker Richards ran for governor his power and popularity has gone down and Rep Stumbo is supposedly gaining power in order to contend him for the Speaker of the House position. Even though Rep Stumbo supports gaming he opposed the bill in committee because he wants to propose his bill and get it passed so it looks like he has the power and could easily replace Speaker Richards.

The next exciting thing was during the Session the floor majority leader suspended the Rules and the Committee on Committees met and replaced Dottie Sims because she had promised Speaker Richards she would vote for the bill but during committee opposed the bill. Representative Sims went straight to the reporters after being removed from the committee by two Democratic Representatives. The Republican Caucus was very upset in this replacement adding two Democratic members and not one Republican so Rep Ford spoke up and expressed this to the General Assembly and to Speaker Richards.

Thursday was also very exciting during the General Assembly when Rep Stein accused Rep lee of his amendment not being germane and saying it oinked like a pig. Another bill sponsored by Rep Marzian was debated on because of a mandate of using a certain edition of the AMA pertaining to Impairment Provisions and Workers Comp.