Little voter interest in Kentucky primary

LOUISVILLE, Ky., May 20 (UPI) -- It may be a good thing voter turnout was pegged at 20 percent for Tuesday's Kentucky primary election. The ballots are wrong.

Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Lunsford and his running mate, Barbara Edelman, dropped out of the race Friday. Lunsford spent $8 million of his own money on the ill-fated campaign fought largely through attack ads.

The Republican ballot has Ernie Fletcher running with Hunter Bates, but Bates was tossed off the ballot weeks ago by the courts because he failed to meet residency requirements. Fletcher's running mate now is former U.S. Attorney Steve Pence.

And all this was after revelations incumbent Gov. Paul Patton, who was barred from seeking a third term, had an affair with a nursing home operator and granted her special favors.

After quitting the race, Lunsford endorsed House Speaker Jody Richards for the Democratic nod over front-running Attorney General Ben Chandler. Lunsford cited the most recent of Chandler's attack ads for his decision to drop out of the race. The ad featured the daughter of a woman abused in a Vencor nursing home. Lunsford headed up Vencor before it went bankrupt.

On the Republican side, Fletcher, the perceived front-runner, faces former Jefferson County Judge-Executive Rebecca Jackson, who pledged to replace the statue of Jefferson Davis in the Capitol rotunda with the statue of a prominent Kentucky woman, and state Rep. Steve Nunn of Glasgow.

Secretary of State John Brown III initially hoped 30 percent of the state's 2.5 million voters would turn out but "with the absentee voting still way down and county clerks saying it's going to be very low ... turnout may well be closer to 20 percent." Brown Monday attributed some of the downturn to a crackdown on vote buying, which had swelled the number of absentee ballots in past elections.

Polls opened at 6 a.m. and close at 6 p.m. Turnout for the 1995 primary was 21.3 percent; it was only 6.4 percent in 1999.