Flashback: Did Mitch McConnell, Paul Patton strike a deal?

With the upcoming Kentucky U.S. Senate race now front and center, and with allegations floating around that Mitch McConnell influenced former Gov. Matt Bevin to drop former Lt. Gov. Jeanean Hampton from his re-election ticket in favor of state Sen. Ralph Alvarado, it's time to look back two decades at a longstanding Bluegrass political question that has never been answered.

Did McConnell and former Gov. Paul Patton have some sort of deal in place to protect each other's political viability? That in exchange for the Republican Party not fielding a viable candidate against Patton when he ran for re-election in 1999, that Patton would not run for Senate against McConnell in 2002? The existence of such an agreement has been rumored for years, but no one has ever gone on the record to confirm or deny it. There might have been some -- gasp -- collusion or quid pro quo going on.

To examine the matter, let's go back to 1995. Patton was elected by slightly more than 21,000 votes over Republican Larry Forgy. The state GOP had not experienced its ascendency yet, so by the standards of the day, that was considered an extremely close margin. That race had some parallels to this year's gubernatorial election. Like 2019, the 1995 race was decided in Jefferson County. And like 2019, there were allegations of election improprieties. Unlike this year, though, criminal charges were actually filed against a handful of Patton's operatives and backers. That court case ended when Patton issued controversial pardons -- again, a parallel to this year -- for those charged.

Patton was the first Kentucky governor eligible to succeed himself in office. By the time 1999 rolled around, he had a record to either run on, or run from. And two of his positions had been quite controversial. He supported changes to workers compensation rules for employees injured on the job in a way that many felt negatively impacted coal miners' black lung claims. And he backed the removal of the community college system from the University of Kentucky's control, to be moved under a new umbrella covering community and technical colleges.

So, Patton was vulnerable. He even admitted after the 1999 election that he could've been beaten. So, you would have expected the Republicans to be chomping at the bit to finally claim the office that had eluded them so narrowly four years prior, and to win it back for the first time since Louie Nunn left office in 1971.

Again, the Republican Party was still in its ascendancy in Kentucky. The GOP had not firmed up its grip on the federal delegation, and control of the General Assembly was a distant dream back then. Forgy opted against another run at the office. But surely there was some strong Republican candidate waiting in the wings, who could have been backed by the McConnell machine that was gaining strength at the time.

Nope. No Republican with a legitimate shot of unseating a vulnerable incumbent stepped forward. Party leaders made no effort to recruit a viable candidate. The primary came down to a perennial candidate named David Williams who had switched parties (no relation to the future GOP state Senate leader) and a delightful but out-of-her-league lady named Peppy Martin. Martin won the nomination, but was no match for Patton, who cruised to victory. Martin is probably best known for wearing a prom dress to her election night event.

In retrospect, a look back at the election results shows just how susceptible Patton was to being beaten. Martin carried four predominately Republican counties in eastern Kentucky, but she also surprisingly won three counties in the coalfields (Perry, Harlan, and Letcher) that are Democrat strongholds. Patton's margin of victory in many other Appalachian counties, including his home county of Pike, was far less than one might have expected.

So why didn't the GOP field a strong challenger against Patton? Conventional wisdom of the day was that a Democrat running for re-election in Kentucky was guaranteed a victory, and that Republicans didn't want to run a potential future candidate's political outlook by sacrificing him or her to an incumbent. Contrast that to this year, when it was considered an upset when a Democrat beat an unpopular Republican incumbent.

But it didn't take long for an alternative theory to emerge. Patton was said to be looking ahead to 2002's U.S. Senate race, when McConnell would be up for re-election. Although McConnell was already the most powerful Republican in the state, he still hadn't climbed to the apex of political power. He didn't have nearly as much muscle to flex back then as he does now. So from thence came rumors of a deal: If McConnell wouldn't get the state Republicans behind a gubernatorial challenger in 1999, Patton would not run for Senate in 2002.

As it turned out, a deal wasn't necessary. McConnell beat his 2002 challenger, Lois Combs Weinberg, daughter of the late Gov. Bert T. Combs, by a 65-35 margin (the reverse of what voter registration was in Kentucky at the time). Weinberg was so bad of a candidate that it's rumored even her stepmother, Judge Sara Combs, didn't support her. A possible Patton run in 2004 against the then-first-term incumbent Jim Bunning to reclaim what Democrats regarded as "Wendell Ford's seat" evaporated in controversy. The Tina Conner scandal torpedoed Patton's political future as an elected official, although he's since re-emerged as something of an elder statesman for his party.

So, here we are, 20 years later. McConnell's fingerprints were all over two Kentucky GOP primary races earlier this year, secretary of state and attorney general. Not only do some think he was behind Hampton's removal from the gubernatorial ticket, which they think contributed to Bevin's loss, but they see McConnell behind a systematic purge of staunch conservatives who worked in Bevin's administration. So McConnell's wheeler-dealer skills have been honed and he's still using them.

There's no doubt that McConnell is a master political manipulator. But did he get some solid practice in the art two decades ago? It's a question that many longtime Bluegrass political observers would love to have answered. Maybe one of these days, when someone is brave enough to ask McConnell when they're writing yet another profile of him, or sometime when Patton has had a few too many of the beverages he's said to be fond of, there will finally be a confirmation or denial on the record to finally put an end to the speculation.