By James Nold Jr.
This year, we face a novelty. It will be the second mayor’s race for Louisville Metro, the (mostly) politically unified Jefferson County that commenced operations in 2003. But the first race was essentially a walkover for Jerry Abramson, the former Louisville mayor who spearheaded the drive for governmental merger: Republican Jack Early spent less than $25,000 and received less than 25 percent of the vote.
This race promises to be something different. Over a year before the November election, Kelly Downard, the retired banker and Metro Council member who is the likely Republican candidate, had raised more than 10 times Early’s entire 2002 budget (Downard reported $225,488 as of Sept. 30, 2005; more recently, his campaign has claimed to have raised $300,000).
And the newly unified Metro Louisville is a more favorable place for Republicans to run. In the former city of Louisville, the last Republican mayor was Kenneth Schmied, who left office in 1969. In the succeeding years, the closest races have been in the Democratic primary — for example, the 1985 contest, in which Abramson won the nomination over William Ryan, or Dave Armstrong’s 1998 squeaker over Tom Owen.
This year, the contest promises to be in the general election. “Merger made this a two-party community,” says Riggs Lewis, the local attorney and lobbyist who is serving as Downard’s campaign chairman. Lewis sees this as another step in a progression that started with Republicans’ stronger-than-expected showing in the 2002 Metro Council elections and Downard’s ascendance to the Council presidency a year later.
“This is a baseline campaign for Republicans to see the competitiveness of a mayor’s race,” he says “This is the first time the Republicans have fielded a countywide, highly credible, previously elected person. We’ve never had a campaign like this before.”
If, as seems certain, the election is primarily an Abramson-Downard race — independent Ed Springston has also declared — it’s a conflict between men who are close in an unexpected sense of the word: They’re longtime friends. Downard says the friendship goes back 25 years; the two men worked closely together in Downard’s role as president and CEO of the Louisville Community Development Bank and on other bodies such as the Downtown Development Corporation and the Louisville Housing Partnership, all of which interact with the mayor.
Downard says, “I’m dissatisfied with the performance of the administration, but he’s my friend. I like him, he’s a good person.” Abramson also acknowledges the relationship, but sounds a different note: “He has been a longtime fri/files/storyimages/of mine and I am disappointed. Having said that, he certainly has a right to run.”
They’re also both centrists. The words “conservative” and “liberal” did not come up in the interviews for this story. On three major issues of the last year or so — the Fairness Ordinance banning discrimination against gays, the smoking ordinance and the location of a new arena — Abramson and Downard have ended up on the same side.
Abramson — long known as every Republican’s favorite Democrat — often says, “There is no Democrat or Republican way to run a city. If you want to get into ideological warfare, go to Washington or Frankfort.” Abramson says that he didn’t know Downard’s party affiliation before Downard ran for Metro Council; and when Downard was elected Metro Council president in 2004 he had the support of three Democratic Council members.
Democrats cite Abramson’s prodigious approval ratings — 81 percent in a February 2005 Courier-Journal poll — and wonder if Downard can take on the man who has embodied civic pride for two decades. “Kelly Downard is still to some degree an unknown,” says Dan Borsch, a local attorney who is president of the Louisville-Jefferson County Young Democrats. “Kelly’s a nice person to talk to, but what kind of macro aura is he going to have? I don’t really think he comes across as an Arnold Schwarzenegger kind of person. He’s just, you know, another Metro Council member.”
But in context, Downard is something special. WHAS-11 political reporter Mark Hebert calls Downard ”a credible candidate” who can make this “a viable race.” Attorney and conservative writer John David Dyche says Downard is “a more articulate and telegenic person than Abramson has ever run against before.” And several observers point out that because Abramson is essentially untested, it’s hard to judge whether the mayor’s whopping approval rating reflects, in Hebert’s terms, “hard support or soft support.”
Ted Jackson, who has steered Ann Northup to five terms in Congress from what’s considered to be a naturally Democratic district, and will be advising Downard, suggests that Abramson has stayed too long at the fair. “The problem is, whether it’s Jerry Abramson or any politician,” Jackson says, “if you stay in a job too long your vision narrows and what you think is possible, and indeed what is possible, is restricted. It’s a natural part of the process. . . . People get weary.” (What about the multi-term Northup, then? “There’s a difference between executive and legislative roles,” Jackson says. “I think it’s a different job.”)
For his part, Abramson — who never comes off as weary when he talks — hits the reset button on his time in politics, harking back in conversation not to 1985 (the Republicans’ reference point) but 2002, when the merger campaign created our current polity and brought the community new possibilities.
Both sides are playing the campaign close to the vest. Abramson won’t even concede that the race will definitely be between himself and Downard (although he sounds like he’s teasing when he says that). Downard, at press time, had chosen a campaign manager but declined to identify him or her.
But they’ve said enough to get a general sense of the ground on which they plan to fight. And although they may not be far apart on an ideological spectrum, it seems evident that they will draw clear distinctions. Talking to Abramson and Downard (or their supporters), you can almost believe that they were discussing two
different cities.
Abramson talks about Louisville today with the buoyant enthusiasm that’s been his stock-in-trade, the surge of his rhetoric matching the dynamism he discerns in Louisville Metro. “My take right now, at least from what I hear from folks I speak to around the community, is they’ve never felt more positive about the momentum in our hometown for many, many, many years,” he says. “And since I was mayor for most of that many years, I have to agree with them. There is an energy right now in the community, a ‘Yes, we can!’ spirit.”
As wellsprings of this feeling he cites a number of economic-development successes, from new manufacturing jobs coming to Louisville at a time “when manufacturing is leaving the United States” to job expansions at local companies such as Humana, UPS, YUM and Kindred, which he sees as a vote of confidence in the community’s prospects by knowledgeable insiders. He also mentions the “City of Parks” initiative, which he announced a year ago, the ongoing growth of Waterfront Park and increasing entertainment and housing options downtown.
The Republican response is to note that since Abramson first took office, communities with which we compete have pulled ahead.
“In 1985, we were in competition with Memphis, Nashville, Jacksonville, Charlotte, Indianapolis,” Downard says. “I would cont/files/storyimages/that in the interim they have created more jobs, more opportunity and more vibrancy.” He says that Louisville’s leadership hasn’t taken “bold steps” to move the community forward. As examples of roads not taken, he cites the move to build a new arena (“which we should have done long ago”), investments in cultural capital such as libraries and the arts, and the state of public safety (more about that shortly).
Abramson says the comparison with other cities isn’t apples to apples, and that merger is one of the keys to changing the disparity. “You give me 35 years of consolidated government, as Nashville and Indianapolis have had; give me the state capital, as Nashville and Indianapolis have had; and the growth that we have had — which has been good — would be better, no question. . . . (Those cities have) been able to speak with one voice, act as one institution, whereas we spent a lot of time over the last 20 years not getting along.
“And we would continue to be in that backbiting position of a city and county and trying to catch up with those other communities if I hadn’t been a part of the leadership to lead merger. Remember, I played a role in that.”
Just as Abramson gets rolling as he depicts Louisville’s momentum, Downard catches fire on the subject of public safety.
“You can get my Bunsen burner going on this one,” he says, as he talks about the state of disrepair of a number of firehouses within the former city limits, which a 2004 study revealed had leaking roofs and black plastic sheeting on their windows against the cold air. He deplores the time spent waiting for the study of the fire department Abramson announced this past November. “Let me tell you something,” Downard says. “If your roof leaks, you don’t wait for a deployment study; you fix the roof.”
Abramson says that the firehouses’ disrepair came from neglect in the years before he took office; that the bond issue he proposed and the Metro Council passed in 2004, which included $1 million for firehouse repair, has paid for the most immediate needs (such as drafty windows and leaky roofs); and that it made no sense to make more dramatic and expensive changes until the study of the fire department was completed. (The study called for a modernization of the department in which two firehouses would be closed and a number of others moved or consolidated. The city is gathering comments from firefighters and the community and will propose a plan based on the study for this spring’s budget.)
Downard — whose stepson is a Metro Louisville police officer — talks with strong sympathy for police, fire, corrections and other public-safety officers. “I believe the safety of this community is held in disrespect” by the current administration, Downard says. “The morale of the (police) officers on the street is as bad as it’s ever been.” He says the administration’s attitude and policies have caused mounting crime rates (for example, homicides in Jefferson County rising from 43 in 2001 to 70 in 2004 and 64 — plus one each under the jurisdictions of Shively and St. Matthews, respectively — in 2005; or a recent rise in Old Louisville robberies that led to increased patrols, including officers on horseback).
Abramson denies the allegation of disrespect, saying, “The financial commitment and the leadership we’ve selected show a strong commitment of this administration to public safety.”
Talking about crime rates, Abramson employs a gambit similar to the Republicans’ on economic growth, going for a comparative view. He says that Louisville faces problems similar to those of other cities its size, and points to the community’s ranking as one of the country’s 10 safest big cities, in an analysis of the 2004 FBI crime statistics done by the Morgan Quitno Press of Lawrence, Kan. (Only one of the cities Downard mentions as having passed up Louisville economically, Jacksonville, is on the “safest” list, three spaces behind Louisville; in contrast, Memphis, Columbus, Nashville and Charlotte are on the list of the 10 most dangerous cities.)
Abramson portrays problems in the police department — and also the action by local lodges of the Fraternal Order of Police, which last year came out with an endorsement of Downard for mayor in 2006 — as an inevitable result of merger: “When you have 200 years of experience of two departments not liking each other, not getting along, and you put them together, ask them to clasp hands and sing, ‘Kumbaya, we are one,’ you create a lot of consternation.” He portrays much of the discontent as the product of officers who don’t like change but aren’t in a position to retire. “I think over time you’ll see a new metro police department culture.”
When Downard announced the FOP endorsements, the Courier-Journal asked him about Chief Robert White, whom Abramson brought in from Greensboro, N.C., to run the newly united police department. Downard said if he were elected he would replace White.
Abramson says he backs White “1,000 percent” and says, “If it’s a question of ‘FOP versus the chief, who do you want to support?’ I’ll stick with the chief.” He calls White a “superstar” both on the local level — “everywhere I go, the way the people in this community have embraced this chief is something you just don’t see in many communities” — and the national level, as evidenced by his January appointment by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as one of five law-enforcement officials to consult on rebuilding the troubled police department in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.
How will the issue play? Hebert says he isn’t sure how voters view the police department — whether they think complaints from police officers reflect problems or grumbling. “I don’t know that the voters have even thought about that right now,” Hebert says. “Until Downard frames that issue, I don’t think the voters of Louisville are paying that much attention to their police department.”
One of the chief lines about the campaign, spoken with insiderish insightfulness — and aired publicly last August in one of David Hawpe’s Courier-Journal columns — is that Downard is less a candidate than an impediment to Abramson; that his candidacy is intended to hinder the mayor from trying a statewide race (for example, for governor in 2007).
Downard finds this line of thought unflattering, to say the least. “I have had a 35-year career, and to think that I’d sp/files/storyimages/a year and a half to confuse a fri/files/storyimages/of mine is crazy,” he says. “That I would take a year and a half out of my life so that somebody couldn’t run for governor is ludicrous. That’s quite an insult to me, to tell you the truth.”
He laughs. “That’s OK; I expect to them to insult me quite often.”
Downard also rejects the idea that U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell is the string-puller behind his race. “That’s the biggest myth in the entire world. He’s the number-two person in the United States Senate, he’s probably going to be the number-one, and people think he calls me every afternoon and tells me what the Republican caucus (on the Metro Council) ought to do.
“Strategically, I’d be crazy not to ask his opinion. But I can tell you, I don’t call him every week — and probably couldn’t if I wanted to.”
John David Dyche, a former C-J columnist who is writing a biography of McConnell, thinks that Democrats don’t mistake the nature of McConnell’s power, but they overstate its ubiquity. “He pulls all Republican strings (in Kentucky) that he wants to and chooses to pull — or almost all . . .” Dyche says. “But he’s selective. He doesn’t try to control everything.”
Dyche doubts McConnell will be “intimately involved” in the Louisville mayor’s race, especially at the “tactical level.”
But he suggests that Downard should go to school on McConnell. The one time a popular local incumbent was defeated was McConnell’s 1977 election win over Democrat Todd Hollenbach, who was seeking his third term as Jefferson County judge/executive. Working on his McConnell biography, Dyche reviewed McConnell’s ads and found them to be humorous and especially effective at raising “daily-life kind of issues where the job wasn’t being done” and doing so without being “brutally personal.”
So will it be a close race?
In Jefferson County, Democrats retain a 113,269 edge in voter registration (as of last December), but Ted Jackson argues that the success Northup, Rebecca Jackson and others have had in countywide races means that “people know how to vote Republican in this county; they’re not going to have a heart attack when they pull the lever.”
While Downard has raised an unprecedented amount for a Republican mayoral candidate, when Abramson filed a campaign report in November he had approximately twice as much money as Downard, a reported $613,531. The mayor promises an aggressive campaign, saying, “You won’t catch me napping.”
Downard’s campaign chairman writes off Abramson’s monetary advantage as the consequence of incumbency and interprets Downard’s fund raising as a sign of strength: “To raise $300,000 in the city in which he’s running, we think is outstanding — against an 18-year incumbent, it’s remarkable,” says Lewis.
Ted Jackson concurs and expands: “If I were Jerry Abramson and people in his camp, I would not be at all satisfied with that ratio. (Abramson’s war chest) is not a daunting number for a challenger candidate. . . . If he had $2 million, that would be a daunting number.” Jackson says that as the race goes on, Downard can offset his deficits in both funds and name recognition. “It can happen very quickly.”
“We will have the money we need to get our message out,” says Lewis. That’s what’s important, he insists, “not a dollar-for-dollar match.”
But people from several different spots on the political spectrum agree that Downard will have to walk what Hebert calls “a very fine line” in criticizing Abramson: “If he gets out there and says ‘Jerry Abramson’s been a terrible mayor, and that’s why Louisville’s not what it could be,’ Hebert says, “well, voters are not going to want to hear that the place they live and work is a lousy place.
“He’s got a tough job to separate tearing down Jerry Abramson from tearing down the city of Louisville. . . . They’ve been intertwined for the last 20 years.”
“He’s going to have to attack without seeming mean or vicious,” says Dyche. “You can’t do it directly. It’s too risky to go after that popular a person. . . . It’s going to have to be a very subtle and almost subliminal attack, which doesn’t cause a backlash against Downard for being so negative about Abramson and our city.”
And Democrats suggest that Downard’s financial disadvantage will make the Republican campaign turn negative. “When you’re running against somebody with ungodly high popularity,” says Borsch, “the only way to pull someone’s positive numbers down is throw every brick in the house and hope something breaks the window.”
Downard disputes that assertion. “I guess their experience indicates that; mine doesn’t — I’ve never had to do that,” he says. “There’s not a lot of logic to it. It costs just as much money to be negative as to be positive; TV’s not cheaper for negative ads.”
How this all plays out could attract as much attention from citizens of Louisville Metro as the betting charts during Derby Week. This one has the potential to become a horse race.
