Joseph Gerth

Opinion Columnist | Louisville Courier Journal

Last election night – the Kentucky Democratic Party, a charred hulk of its former self, laid waste by a Republican landslide – House Speaker Greg Stumbo took to the stage for a speech that was intended to buck up the Democratic faithful.

“I believe that there’s a horse out there, it’s not American Pharoah, it’s an Arkansas traveler. And that horse is bringing a lady jockey and that horse and that jockey are gonna come here to Kentucky next year and help us rebuild,” he told the dispirited crowd.

But on Kentucky Derby weekend, just a week and a half before Kentucky’s primary election, it’s increasingly looking like Kentucky’s favorite to win the Democratic nomination might be riding a Morgan horse, the state animal of Vermont.

There was a time when the Clinton name was golden in Kentucky.

Bill Clinton won the state in 1992 and in 1996, making him the last Democrat to win Kentucky in a presidential election.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton absolutely crushed Barack Obama in Kentucky even though he was cruising toward the presidential nomination.

But that was then.

Eight years later and 24 years after Bill Clinton first won the White House by building on a coalition of centrist Democrats and independents, Clinton fatigue may have finally set in in Kentucky.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders was in Louisville on Tuesday, drawing a massive crowd at an outdoor rally at Waterfront Park, while Bill Clinton, a former president, drew a much smaller crowd at the Kentucky Center for African American just a few miles away.

Gerth | Bevin veto undermines GOP relationships

There is no doubt that there is significant appetite for Sanders’ brand of democratic socialism, especially in the state’s liberal strongholds like Louisville and Lexington where some Democrats have grown weary of Democratic politicians moving to the right in order to not alienate more conservative independent voters.

But Clinton’s problems also lie elsewhere in the state, particularly the coalfields where Obama performed so poorly and where Republicans have blamed him for conducting a “war on coal,” while conveniently forgetting the market and geological forces that have made it so expensive to dig up carbon in Kentucky.

Having served in the Obama administration, she already had what is clearly a taint of his presidency in the region. Clinton dug her hole even deeper when talking on CNN about helping coal regions and said she would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business."

On a trip to Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia last week, she apologized and said that she misspoke, but it may be too late to salvage her candidacy in the region. She was met with protestors along the way.

Bill Clinton, who performed strongly in the coal regions, was even booed in Logan, W.Va., where the mayor refused to use fire department facilities for his event there.

Clinton aides told the Associated Press that Hillary Clinton didn’t expect to win Kentucky or West Virginia. Sanders' campaign on Friday in The Washington Post wasn't quite ready to claim victory.

10 takeaways from Trump, Sanders wins in Indiana

The irony here is that Sanders is no friend of the coal industry and has proposed banning mountaintop removal mining, which is practiced in Appalachia.

Both he and Clinton have called for spending billions of dollars in the region to help displaced coal miners and bring sustainable industry back to the area.

But that doesn’t seem to matter.

Nope, it may not be a lady jockey on an Arkansas traveler trudging through the hills of Kentucky. It might just be an old white-haired guy astride a Morgan.

Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or jgerth@courier-journal.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Gerth.