Politics

The re-election campaign for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is dismissing a poll conducted by The Louisville Courier-Journal, which shows the GOP leader with just 17 percent support.

According to the survey, voters opposed to McConnell’s re-election outnumber supporters 2-to-1. It also found that only one-third of Republican voters support him in the 2014 election, adding further fuel to Tea Party criticism and outright defiance of McConnell's leadership in Kentucky.

McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton responded by saying no incumbent could fare well given the surveys line of questioning.

"The question itself minimizes the level of support for an incumbent by requiring a poll respondent to pledge their allegiance despite the prospect of an unnamed utopian candidate looming in the wings," said Benton.  "To make the bias even more pronounced than a generic 'someone else,' which is difficult enough, this question hardens that by asserting you must support him 'no matter who runs against him.'  So your neighbor, best friend, husband/wife, priest, pastor, reverend or rabbi wouldn’t get your vote if they were on the ballot.

Republican leaders in the Louisville Metro Council are headed to Frankfort this week to lobby state lawmakers on pension reform.

The city’s pension cost has more than doubled in the past decade to make up approximately 15 percent of the budget.  In his State of the City address, Mayor Greg Fischer urged residents to call for their legislators to take action in this year’s session to change the system.

Republican Caucus Chairman Ken Fleming, R-7, and Vice-Chairman Jerry Miller, R-19, are scheduled to meet with Republican state Sen. Damon Thayer of Georgetown, who co-chaired a legislative task force on the state pension system.

Miller says rising pension costs are at critical stage and are extremely important for Louisville residents because of the potential impact on city services.

"If you’re in government you have to deal with pension cost because of it’s dramatic increase, which is really crowding out a lot of other things we’d like to do—social services and a variety of other things," he says.

An Indiana Senate committee has approved a bill that would crack down on retailers who sell synthetic drugs.

Lawmakers have previously outlawed substances such as synthetic marijuana, also known as Spice or K2, and bath salts, but Sen. Jim Merritt (R-Indianapolis)  says some shops are still selling them.

"If it walks like a skunk, and it smells like a skunk and it looks like a skunk, it’s a skunk.   And what we have on retail counters today are skunks," Merritt said. 

A bill intended to protect health care workers from assault by body fluid or waste has advanced in the Indiana General Assembly.

Bill sponsor Sen. Michael Crider (R-Greenfield), who also heads a hospital security team, says current state law does not cover employees at medical facilities who often have to deal with intoxicated or agitated patients.

With the news that more than a dozen tea party groups are actively recruiting a GOP candidate to run against U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2014, it’s worth taking a look at how Kentucky tea party-endorsed candidates have fared in statewide or Congressional races.

Since forming in the run up to the 2010 mid-term elections, Kentucky's tea party has won more than a third of the races its challenged for prominent offices, and its candidates have won several primaries over Republican establishment candidates.