Joseph Gerth and James R. Carroll

The Courier-Journal

State Rep. Tom Burch, D-Buechel, touched off a firestorm Wednesday when, speaking at the Louisville Forum, he had what many in the GOP think is the gall to suggest that the state needs to move beyond coal and focus on renewable types of energy.

"If we could get coal out of the way, I think we'd have a lot of good things going here," said Burch, who noted that coal really is a dirty fuel and years ago made Louisville's air so bad you couldn't see past 10 feet during the winter.

But his main point was that the industry is in decline while renewable energy is on the rise.

"Coal at one time, was the driver in this state," he said. "Renewable energy is the future and those are going to be the job creators. ... We can't depend on coal forever. It had its day."

By Friday, Republicans were jumping all over Burch at a meeting in Frankfort of the General Assembly's Special Subcommittee on Energy.

Rep. Tim Couch, R-Hyden, even said during the hearing that he would sign a letter asking Burch to resign.

The GOP House Caucus chided Democratic leaders for sending Burch to attend the forum in their stead and suggested that since they hadn't repudiated Burch, they must agree with him.

But is that so wrong?

Phillip Bailey, at WFPL reported that Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, who is running for the GOP nomination for governor in 2015, made very similar statements last year.

"A lot of leaders in Eastern Kentucky keep talking about 'coal is the answer and there is a war on coal.' I'm a friend of coal. I support the coal industry. But the coal industry's future doesn't look bright and we have to look beyond that and learn to develop a new economy in Eastern Kentucky," Bailey quoted Comer as saying last year.

• Paul in the Hamptons: Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is discovering, if he doesn't know it already, that a Republican front-runner for president gets more scrutiny than the average candidate.

And so when he cites family reasons for not attending an Iowa conservative gathering Saturday but then shows up on the same day at a celebrity-heavy event in the Hamptons on Long Island — featuring actor Alec Baldwin, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, actress Lee Grant, and Lyndon Johnson biographer Robert Caro, among others — it gets noticed.

Paul's campaign insisted the family commitment was real.

The detour to the tony Hampton event raised eyebrows back in Iowa, reporter Jennifer Jacobs wrote in The Des Moines Register, a sister paper to The Courier-Journal.

"An Iowa evangelical Christian leader stood on stage and told the 1,200 conservatives in the audience and the dozens of reporters that U.S. Sen. Rand Paul had told him he couldn't be at the event Saturday because of a 'family commitment,' " Jacobs reported.

"Then The New York Post's 'Page Six' published the news that Paul was in the Hamptons on Saturday with Alec Baldwin. Paul was 'among the intellectual elite' at a fundraiser for a library in East Hampton that Baldwin co-sponsored, the column says."

Jacobs noted that the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa was attended by five other possible GOP White House hopefuls. Paul was actually listed as a co-sponsor.

• Mixed poll results: First, the good news for Paul: he is gaining on former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in a hypothetical 2016 presidential match-up.

Now, the bad news: Paul is behind some other contenders in support among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and his standing in the tea-party wing of the Republican Party has eroded considerably.

Those are a couple of takeaways from a new Marist Poll released Thursday.

Clinton leads former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush 48 percent to 41 percent, tops New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie 47 percent to 41 percent, and has a 48 percent to 42 percent advantage over Paul.

A Marist Poll in April showed Clinton with a 14-point lead over Paul, an 11-point lead over Christie and a 16-point lead over Bush.

Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, Bush and Christie share first place with 13 percent support each, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 10 percent, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 9 percent each, and Paul sharing fourth place with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, each with 7 percent.

Reporter Joseph Gerth can be reached at (502) 582-4702. Follow him on Twitter @Joe_Gerth. Reporter James R. Carroll can be reached at (703) 854-8945. Follow him on Twitter @JRCarrollCJ.