Leadership is displayed in many forms and in many areas that affect our lives. When we were children, we would play follow the leader and other games such as Simon says, that would teach us the importance and authority of leaders as well as how to act and become a good follower. As we grew, we then saw leadership demonstrated in nominations for school clubs and organizations. Then as we venture out into the workforce and projects need to be completed, leaders are selected to keep everything under control and in order. Leadership can also be seen in other areas such as religion, our social life, and the political arena. As an intern in Frankfort, I got to see the role leadership can play in politics. I learned that through a leader’s strength, charisma, and stability they can influence those around them as well as the secondary crowd which is the public in which they serve.

First, in order to see the role the different leaders in the Kentucky General Assembly possess, you have to know a little about the people in these leadership positions and the leadership positions they fulfill. We will first start out with the Senate. The Senate President is David Williams from the Cumberland area. The President Pro Tempore is Katie Stein from the Campbell, Pendleton area. The Senate majority leader is Dan Kelley from the South-Central Kentucky area. The Senate Minority Floor Leader is Ed Worley from the area around Richmond.

Now let’s look at the positions held in the House. In the House the Speaker is Jody Richards from the Bowling Green area. The Majority leader is Rep. Rocky Adkins from the North-Eastern part of the state. The Majority Caucus Chair is Rep. Charlie Hoffman from the Georgetown area. Then we have the minority leaders, which I have come to know on a personal level having worked for the Caucus Chairman. The Minority House Leader is Jeff Hoover from the Cumberland area particularly in Russell County. The House Minority Caucus Chairman is Rep. DeWeese from the Louisville area and the Minority Whip Stan Lee from the Fayette county area.

The most important differences to note between these leaders are that the House of Representatives and the Senate are at odds in which party holds the majority. The House is run by the Democrats, whereas the Senate is run by the Republicans.

Another important leadership position is that of the committee chairs. Positions include the elections, constitutional amendments and intergovernmental affairs, appropriations and revenue, and rules committees are especially important. The committee chair for Rules in the House is Jody Richards, Appropriations and Revenue chair is Rep. Harry Moberly, and the chair for elections, constitutional amendments and intergovernmental affairs is Rep. Owens. Other committee chairs that were important in this General Assembly is Rep. Gooch who is Chairman of the Natural Resources and Environment committee, the education chair Rep. Rasche, the transportation committee chair Rep Collins, Energy and Tourism chair Rep Ballard and Health and Welfare chairman Burch. The two committees I got to know the most were Appropriations and Revenue and Health and Welfare because they were the committees that Rep DeWeese, whom I interned for, was a member of.

The first time I saw leadership being displayed in the General Assembly was during a committee meeting in which chairman Burch or Moberly would have a bill brought up for discussion, but no vote, and they would be the sponsor of the bills. I didn’t understand how they had the power to decide which bills would be heard and which wouldn’t. I later learned that a bill’s most important step is to get called up in a committee.  A majority of the bills that do get called up will be automatically passed through. The chairs in the committees take care of protocol bills that have to get passed each session. For instance in Appropriations and Revenue Chairman Moberly sponsored HB 406, 407 and 408 which deals with making appropriations for the operations, maintenance and support of the Judicial, Legislative, and Executive Branches. These bills enable a budget to be discussed and debated and then later become the actual budget bills for the next two years.

One other important bill that Chairman Moberly sponsored was the stream-saver piggy-back bill. Representative Gooch Chairman for Natural Resources and Environment is a strong anti global warming advocate and therefore will not allow controversial bills to come up in his committee especially bills dealing with the issue of big coal, www.kftc.org. In order for a committee to even hear the stream-saver bill the sponsors tacked it onto another bill that had to do with the taxes placed on zoo animals which allowed Appropriations and Revenue to hear the bill. The bill didn’t pass through the committee but at least it was heard by a small group of Representatives.

Representative Burch also sponsored controversial bills so that they could be heard by Health and Welfare. At times they would use the whole time for discussion on one of bills and then they next time they met they would vote on the bill. One bill that was brought up for discussion by the sponsor and then voted on at a later time was HB 724 dealing with corporal punishment in schools.

An example of the importance of the chairman is displayed in the book “Politics, Religion and Death,” by Carl Wedekind. This book is a memoir of his conquest to abolish the death penalty. One chapter of the book is devoted to the importance of committee chairs. When it was time for the abolition bill to be called up in the House Judiciary committee the chair kept putting it off. Mr. Wedekind would continue to ask the chair, Rep. Lindsay, to call up the bill for a vote since the committee had already heard the legislation in the interim session. Wedekind even went to the Speaker and the Majority leader to see if they could talk to the chair about calling up the bill. Finally after the session had come to a close Rep Lindsay was asked why he didn’t bring up the bill and his response was that he didn’t have to. This is an example of how it doesn’t matter about the principles, committee system or representation it only matters about the chairs opinion and his power.

The area of the state that the chairman is from can also determine what type of legislation will be heard. In example, the Transportation committee chair Rep. Collins is from Eastern Kentucky and the energy and tourism chair is from western Kentucky around the Owensboro area because of this they tend to not concern themselves about the tri-county areas of Louisville, Lexington, and Northern Kentucky therefore focusing on the rural areas of the state. I know Rep DeWeese being from Louisville was constantly upset with the transportation committee because they’re main concern was the Eastern Kentucky parkway and not Louisville’s traffic problems in needing another bridge. Geography can contribute to how a leader acts, the majority leader of the House is a member of the Eastern Kentucky mafia and therefore is against taxes and regulations on coal and being a leader can influence others to be with him who would normally be impartial.

In order to be a successful committee chair power over legislation that comes through and what will go on in your committee needs to be present in order to get things accomplished. One example of weak leadership was when one of the casino bills was voted on in the Elections, Constitutional Amendments and Intergovernmental Affairs. The Bill to amend the constitution to allow the residents of Kentucky to vote on casinos was passed by one vote and because Representative Owens had a recount of the votes Rep Dottie Sims changed her vote therefore allowing the most important bill from the executive office to die. The blame cannot be put just on Representative Owens it can also be placed on the weak leadership of the governor.

Governor Brashear had two bills he was proposing to the General Assembly one dealt with allowing the residents of Kentucky to vote on amending the Constitution to allow gaming. The second allowed the General Assembly to take action to implement casinos and appropriations for them. His problem was that a division was beginning to occur in the House between Representative Stumbo and Speaker Richards and the Governor did not choose Speaker Richards to sponsor his bills. Governor Beshear did not want to take sides so he wouldn’t further divide the House but this had a reverse affect because not choosing one person to be in charge allowed Stumbo to come in and pursue his own agenda. This was not the beginning of Beshear’s mistakes in a personalistic culture such as Kentucky the governor should have already talked and politicked his legislation before the session even began and he didn’t so that made his leadership skills vulnerable to attack from the Senate and the divisions in the House.

Richards only supported one of the two Casino bills therefore he sponsored the legislation that allowed the residents of Kentucky to vote on amending the Constitution to allow casinos. Rep. Dottie Sims had told Richards that she would vote for the bill in the committee and when the votes were first counted she had voted yes to pass the bill out. Then when the votes were recounted Stumbo had persuaded her to vote no against the bill and to vote for his casino legislation. This was the first major showing of Rep Stumbo gaining power in hope to replace the speaker. This is one example of Kentucky’s individualistic political culture coming into action, because Stumbo wanted to advance himself by getting his Casino bill through the committee making him look more powerful than the Speaker.

Speaker Richards, who normally personifies Kentucky’s personalistic culture, which is being more concerned with being personable instead of ideological, knew he had to show his strength over Rep. Stumbo in order to keep the House democrats united. During the session, the Rules were suspended and Speaker Richards replaced Dottie Sims with two other democratic representatives who would vote in favor of the Speaker’s casino bill. This angered the republican leadership in the House and they had a member speak up against this promotion because they replaced one member with two therefore making an unfair advantage towards the republicans. The republicans tend to have the moralistic political culture view on gaming. This view is founded in the evangelical churches, and sees gambling as wrong because it encourages people to stumble by throwing away money they might not even have. Speaker Richards’ bill eventually got passed in the committee, but was stopped by the Senate, which is controlled by the republicans.

Penny Miller has demonstrated throughout her book “Kentucky Politics and Government” how important Kentucky’s traditionalistic culture is at affecting the politics and legislation that goes on in the state. Because of this traditionalistic culture government is viewed as promoting programs especially those that seem to promote the interest of the factions or the constituents back home instead of ideologies.

Speaker Richards, due to the suspension of rules to replace Dottie Sims, became stricter throughout the session therefore having to put aside his personalistic nature. For instance, Rep Moore was shut down once because his amendment was considered un-germane. He was then cut off by the Speaker while speaking on another bill as well. The second time Moore was shut down, House minority floor leader, Rep. Hoover, asked to speak and said that the way the speaker handled the situation was unruly and the rules do not allow that type of behavior. The Speaker said that what Moore was speaking on was irrelevant and that he handled the situation the way he sees fit. The real reason for the continuous cut-offs on the Speakers behalf towards Moore is because Rep. Moore recruited his brother to run against a Democrat in the Western Kentucky area.

            Even as Speaker Richards showed his strength, Rep. Stumbo also showed his strength as an unofficial leader. One way Stumbo again showed his power as the up and coming leader, was his vote change on one of Robin Webb’s bills. Rep. Stumbo voted one way on a bill then went off the floor with Robin Webb to converse the bill and then came back onto the floor and changed his vote just to show he had the power to stop the General Assembly from proceeding.

This incident can be paralleled to many instances in the past, brought to our attention by the book “Divide and Dissent” by John Ed Pearce where Clements and Chandler fought over who had the most power. Both Clements and Chandler personified Kentucky’s individualistic culture because everything they did was to advance their positions. For instance when Governor Combs was in office Clements was on the transportation committee which gave him a high enough position to still have power. Also, Chandler once supported a Republican candidate for Governor just because Clements supported the Democratic Candidate. So division has always been present in our state. The powerful leaders such as Stumbo and Williams that focus on the traditionalistic culture and advancement of their policies instead of ideologies usually end up on top.

            The next big instance where Representative Stumbo along with President Williams showed their leadership skills was in the budget. The budget-free conference committee lasted till eight the next morning, with the Democratic House and the Republican Senate discussing and debating certain appropriations and projects. The free conference committee is set up as a way to work through the differences between the House budget proposal and the Senate budget proposal. With the session coming close to an end, the chambers had to get the budget done so the Governor could have a look at it and determine if he wants to veto or change certain parts of the bill. The biggest contradiction during the night was over how much money should be appropriated to the Governor to use during the two-year budget. The Democrats wanted to appropriate a larger amount than the Republicans. Democrats think we should use bonds to pay for projects and the Republicans are skeptics of using bonds very often. President Williams made a proposal for how much he thought the governor should get and the Democrats disagreed, so after hours of debate Williams ended up walking out of the committee saying that he was not going to negotiate anymore. For about three hours there was no negotiation made and finally Senator Kelly came back to the committee and a compromise was met. The ironic thing is it looked more like the proposal Senator Williams had proposed than what the Democrats wanted even though they had been in the committee much longer than Senator Williams.

The budget ended up the way the Republicans wanted because the Democratic Party was already consequently divided. Not to mention Governor Beshear had not had a conference with the Democrats before the session on exactly what he wanted in the budget which caused them to not be united on some issues. The budget also didn’t have anything about gambling in it, which was one thing that Senator Williams strongly opposed being from the rural Cumberland area that tends to have the moralistic political cultural view. It wasn’t all a walk in the park for the majority Senate leaders. They had some objections by some of the House republicans especially on the issues concerning tolls, water and sewage projects and coal severance. Northern Kentucky republicans were upset about the tolls and Eastern Kentucky representatives were upset about the cutting of coal severance to certain areas, programs and projects.

The Republican leadership in the House was very effective in whipping the Republicans into voting for the budget bill. This couldn’t have been done without the individualistic culture of David Williams. In order to get certain influential republican representatives to vote for the budget he had to give them all little projects they had asked for in order to advance his legislation. One instance of this was republican Representative Stewart who is liked by both Democrats and Republicans alike in the House. In his district, there is a small elementary school that has about 40 students and it has been threatened to be shut down a couple times. In this budget, in order to advance his agenda, he placed SEEK funding to the small school so it could stay open longer. This project turned out to be significant because before the budget was voted on there were still a few Republicans that were skeptic of the bill and Representative Stewart acted as the whip and actually persuaded some of the representatives to see it his way. There were lots of little projects such as this in the budget to make the representative from that certain area happy so they would vote in favor of the budget bill.

Another thing that Senator Williams did that caused the House to turn a different direction is that he worked with Representative Stumbo on water and sewer projects and special projects that could be given in districts to increase the number of Yes votes. The Democratic leadership in the House played a key role in getting the budget passed. The majority floor leader gave a great speech for the bill in the Democratic caucus. Even though the Democrats didn’t get the majority of the things they wanted in the budget they knew that it was substantial to have a budget especially in the economic downturn Kentucky is in. Democratic representative Webb gave great speeches in favor of the bill because of all the hard work that was put into it and the stability of having a budget.

There were a substantial number of Democrats that opposed the bill as well. One of the most influential Democrats besides the Floor Leader, Speaker, Caucus Chairman and Whip is Representative Moberly who is the chair of the Appropriations and Revenue committee and he strongly opposed the legislation. Representative Moberly and President Williams do not get along and I got to see just how much dislike there is for one another when Rep Moberly got up and spoke against the budget bill on the floor. His main points were that we should wait till we can have a better budget and that only increasing the teachers pay by one percent was an injustice to education. The biggest point he made was that by passing the bill, the House was allowing the tyrant of a man President Williams to get away with a horrible budget and using projects to win people over.

After the Rep Moberly spill, Rep Hoover, the minority floor leader, got up and spoke in favor of the bill making his main point that we did all we could do with such a tight budget. A couple other Democrats stood up and told why they would vote against the bill. But the leadership from both parties had done its job and the bill was passed with only a little more than 20 people voting No.

The very last instance I saw leadership being displayed in Frankfort was the very last day of the session after the governor had reviewed all the bills and vetoed and made changes to certain things. The session was supposed to start at 12, but the Representatives didn’t go in until around one thirty. When they did go in they only voted on two bills and read citations and honored people at two thirty they recessed till the hour of four. Four o’clock rolled around and they still had not gone back on the floor. The Democrats had been caucusing all day and at times had met with the Governor. The bill legislation that was up for debate today was the pension plan. At the free conference committee both the leadership in the Senate and the House had finally agreed on a certain pension reform plan.

Around ten thirty is what time they eventually went in and things were running smoothly on the floor until a bill came up about a GPS tracking device on house arrest individuals; Rep Wayne got up and filibustered the bill taking us to the time of 11:30 and the pension plan still needed to be voted on. The pension plan was brought up at a quarter till twelve but was denied passage as the Democrats finally showed there strength. Rep Hoover, being upset that some many Democratic Representatives were against the bill, stood up and explained the bill and how they had an agreement in the free-conference committee. The speaker cut off Rep Hoover in mid-sentence and said that it wasn’t true, there was no agreement, and the bill failed.

President Williams was extremely upset with the bill not passing because this was legislation he had worked on for years. The problem was that a majority of the House Republicans also voted against the legislation because at the time it was voted on for final passage it was 12:15 which meant that the session was over, but the clock had been stopped at 11:54. A large percentage of the representatives didn’t know that the particular bill was the pension plan and they also thought it was illegal to vote after twelve so they voted no. President Williams was angered with the house majority leadership as well as the Republican leadership because of the large republicans voting against it.

The leadership displayed by President Williams in this instant and throughout can also be seen displayed in the Federal government. One instance of leadership affecting federal policy is demonstrated in the book “Big Coal,” by John Goodell. Under the Bush administration Elaine Chao was appointed to be the Secretary of Labor the controversy over this is that she is married to Senator Mitch McConnell who is a strong supporter of coal. Chao appointed individuals that would defer from regulations and who would advance her and her husband’s individualistic cultural goals this in turn affected the regulations on coal in mining states such as Kentucky.

As you see leadership is important in all levels of the government. In Kentucky government leadership in both chambers is substantial for the passage and defeat of legislation. There are many cultural, geographical and historical sectors that affect leadership, but in the end it’s up to the leader to decide how he wants things to play out. In Kentucky it is now the time of the leaders in the Legislature to make decisions, when so long it has been the Governor.

Sources:

Goodell, Jeff. (2006). Big Coal. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

 

Miller, Penny M. (1994). Kentucky Politics and Government. Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press.

 

Pearce, John Ed. (1987). Divide and Dissent: Kentucky Politics, 1930-1963. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky.

 

Wedekind, Carl. (2006). Politics, Religion, and Death: Memoir of a Lobbyist. Louisville Kentucky: The Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. 

 

“2008 Bill Tracker.” Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. Apr. 2008. Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. 21 Apr. 2008 <www.kftc.org>