Decision time for Rocky Adkins

(Personal disclosure: I know Rocky Adkins. He's not what I would call a friend, but instead a college acquaintance. I went to school with him at Morehead State, but did not really know him and had no classes with him. My most lengthy interaction with him came the Saturday morning when we took the GRE test together. I've seen him in person once since then. So this is written from the perspective of an observer with no personal partiality except for my ideology, which runs counter to Adkins'.)

Rocky Adkins faces some big decisions, and they must come soon.

Does the longtime state representative from northeastern Kentucky step out and try to seek his party's nomination for the U.S. Senate seat next year that Mitch McConnell will be defending? Will he stay in the Kentucky House of Representatives and try to lead his party back from the crushing defeat it suffered in 2016? Or will he take a position in the administration of incoming Gov. Andy Beshear?

Whatever he does, he'll have to do it in the next few weeks. Beshear takes office Dec. 10, and he'll have to have most of his key staffers named before then and ready to take their jobs.

Adkins and Matt Jones were the Democrats most often mentioned as likely to try to knock off perceived front-runner Amy McGrath in the Senate primary. Jones' decision a few days ago not to run makes it easier for Adkins to compete with McGrath in a one-on-one campaign. There are a few other Democrats who have announced their plans to runs, but they're non-factors.

Right now, McGrath seems to be the favored candidate among the national liberal backers and funders, but many Kentucky Democrats who so desperately want McConnell beaten don't think she's the right candidate to do it. They believe she's too liberal for the rural voters who will make the decision in the election, and who have voted for candidates like McConnell, President Trump, and Gov. Matt Bevin in the past. They point to her inability to unseat Congressman Andy Barr last year in Kentucky's second-most-liberal district in what was a "blue wave" election across the country. She's plagued by a recording in which she states she's farther left than anyone else in the Bluegrass State.

Many think Adkins' rural roots will appeal to conservative Democrats out in the state who have been rejecting the party's candidates in recent elections. He's from Elliott County and still lives there, having returned home after a basketball career at Morehead State University. He has a down-home demeanor and charmed voters during his gubernatorial campaign, then on the stump for Beshear in the general election. You'll find a whole lot of people who think he stands a better chance of ousting McConnell than McGrath will.

But while rural voters may decide the general election, the urban electorate will decide the primary. And McGrath's liberalism will appeal to those in Lexington and especially Louisville, where the Democrats dominate. It would take those voters looking past the most ideologically pure candidate in favor of the one who would be most attractive in a general election contest against McConnell.

Adkins inherited his party's leadership role in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 2017 after the stunning defeat of House Speaker Greg Stumbo. Republicans were hoping that Stumbo would lose his speaker's post if their party took control of the chamber, but got a pleasant surprise when Stumbo lost his re-election bid and had to watch from the sidelines as a Republican got handed the speaker's gavel. Adkins has done an admirable job of holding his dwindling caucus together in the face of GOP control.

Ordinarily, Adkins would have until Jan. 30 to decide whether to run for the Senate or seek re-election to the House. But Beshear's impending inauguration moves that timeline up considerably.

Given his role in Beshear's successful campaign, Adkins' name has been mentioned for a high-level appointed position in the incoming administration. He's most frequently been linked to the secretary's position in my agency, the Transportation Cabinet. (That certainly wouldn't do me any good personally, since Adkins and I are politically opposite.) But he's also been suggested as a candidate to be named Beshear's chief of staff, which seems to be the new title for the position formerly known as Secretary of the Executive Cabinet, which was the role in which Crit Luallen served under Gov. Paul Patton.

He'll have to make that decision soon. His name is conspicuously absent from the list of transition team members Beshear announced last week, which would indicate that he's in the running for an appointment since he won't be advising the governor on whom to appoint. And he certainly wouldn't take a top-level appointed job in December, just to leave it in January to go out on the campaign trail.

I don't know how much of a risk-taker Adkins is, but a Senate campaign would be the riskiest move he could make. He'd have to forego much of the upcoming General Assembly session, in which the legislature will adopt a biennial budget and a state highway plan, to start stumping. Even as Democrats continue to lose traction across the state, he's in one of the safest legislative seats in the commonwealth. Re-election to the House is a shoo-in. And if he opts for a six-figure appointed job, he'll pad his state pension and be eligible to run again for elective office once Beshear's term is up (hopefully in four years.)

The upside to staying in the House or going to work for Beshear 2.0 is much higher than giving up both those options to take a chance on running for Senate, and facing the onslaught of out-of-state money that will come pouring in to support McGrath.

Adkins has been mum about his plans, and I have yet to see him comment on Jones' decision not to run.

Thanksgiving comes late this year. It's less than two weeks from the gubernatorial inauguration. The guess here is that his decision will be made well before then, so any indecision won't give him indigestion as he and his family enjoy their turkey dinner. That means the clock is ticking, and we'll hear something by the end of this week.