A brief history of Kentucky politics for the uninformed

The talk of a possible government shutdown and a default on the nation's debt has placed renewed scrutiny on Kentucky's Mitch McConnell. As the U.S. Senate's Republican leader, McConnell has become something of a lightning rod for blame for any problems the Bluegrass State has.

My personal feelings about McConnell are well-documented. I'm not a fan in the slightest. He's the epitome of an establishment politician. He's a RINO and a swamp-dweller. He stakes out conservative positions only when he finds it convenient. At other times he's part of the go-along-to-get-along crowd. He's actively worked against the populist grassroots tea party and MAGA movements within the GOP.

But when national figures who know nothing about Kentucky and its political structure or history start listing all our ills and try to pin the blame on McConnell and claim Kentucky is a Republican "red state," they're just wrong. Totally, completely, and historically inaccurate.

It's true that Kentucky has a penchant for ranking high in bad categories, and low in good categories, but if you peruse that list of categories, you'll find that most of those items are the responsibility of the state government, not the federal government. And Kentucky has historically been dominated by the Democrats. Here's the proof.

A look at the list of our governors provides the first clue. Of the state's 63 governors, more than half (36) have been Democrats. Happy Chandler served two non-consecutive terms back in the days when governors were term-limited, and Paul Patton and Steve Beshear were both re-elected and served two consecutive terms.

Eighteen of our governors came from parties that no longer exist, including Democratic-Republican, Whig, National Republican, and Know-Nothing.

Only nine -- one-seventh -- of the state's governors have been members of the Republican Party. And when Simeon Willis departed office in December 1947, a long drought began for Kentucky Republicans.

For two decades (five terms), Democrats held the position. Louie B. Nunn broke the string in 1967, but he governed largely as a Democrat during his four years. It's widely thought by Kentucky political observers that his support of increasing the state's sales tax from 3 cents to 5 cents was costly to the GOP. Think of it as a preview of George H. W. Bush's "read my lips, no new taxes" misstep. The tax increase was derisively called "Nunn's nickel" and for years thereafter, the GOP wandered in the gubernatorial political desert.

It was 32 long years and seven Democrats, owing to Patton being the first governor to succeed himself in office, before Republicans won the seat back. U.S. Rep. Ernie Fletcher gave up a seat in Congress, and defeated the grandson of popular former governor Chandler, but only served one term. The Democrats who still controlled most of the rest of state government launched politically-motivated attacks on him, and he lost his re-election bid.

Steve Beshear served two terms, and Republican Matt Bevin was elected in 2015, but he lost re-election due to a variety of factors on a ballot where every other statewide race was won by a Republican. The current governor is a Democrat, Andy Beshear, Steve's son.

So, since 1947, a Republican has had control of the executive branch of state government for only 12 years (and real Republicans for only eight years). The policy failures of the last 74 years certainly can't be laid at the feet of the GOP.

The legislative branch is similar. Democrats controlled both chambers of Kentucky's General Assembly for eons. After a coup that ousted Senate President John "Eck" Rose from power, when a handful of disaffected Democrats joined Republicans in electing Larry Saunders, and with the Senate close to parity between the parties, some Democrats switched parties, giving the GOP control in 2000. Subsequent elections have significantly firmed up the Republican majority.

As for the House, Democrats retained their grip on it until the 2016 elections, during which the GOP shocked the state by not only flipping the House, but winning a decisive majority. A number of Democrats previously thought unbeatable, including Majority Leader Greg Stumbo, lost their re-election bids. Two and four years later, Republicans scored even more impressive wins (including in my own district, where the GOP nominee carried the home county of his Democrat opponent in a locale where Democrats still dominate the political structure). And this happened in districts that Democrats had drawn up to protect their own majority.

It's been a slow process for the federal delegation as well. McConnell has been in office since 1984, and Republicans have held both Senate positions since Jim Bunning won Wendell Ford's old seat, but Democrats have dominated Kentucky's representation in that chamber. As for the House, it's been a methodical march for Kentucky Republicans to secure a majority of those seats. As of now, only one Democrat represents Kentucky in Congress. When the state lost a House seat due to redistricting because of the 1990 census, Democrats still ruled the state and tried every way possible to gerrymander the new districts in their favor. They put U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers in an unfriendly district, but he's won new term after new term.  Like dominoes, seats held by Democrats (Carroll Hubbard, William Natcher, Ken Lucas, and Scotty Baesler, among others) switched hands.

In local positions, Republicans finally took a majority of county judge-executive positions three years ago, but the majority of other elected local officials are Democrats. It's not uncommon for a county fiscal court to be made up of a Republican CJE and the majority of magistrates or commissioners consisting of Democrats.

Presidential elections are usually the national indicator of whether a state is a "red state" or a "blue state," at least according to media political pundits. Kentucky's gone for the Republican over the Democrat in recent years, although Bill Clinton carried the state both times he ran, Jimmy Carter outpolled Gerald Ford in 1976, and Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater in 1964. Adlai Stevenson even topped Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. The Democrat nominee has won the state's electoral votes 23 times since 1864, while the GOP has only been victorious 16 times. (The 1872 election is an outlier; Horace Greeley defeated U.S. Grant in Kentucky running under the banner of the "Liberal Republican" Party.)

Finally, take a look at voter registration numbers. In my youth, Democrats dominated that statistic by a total of nearly 63-35. But the reversal of those numbers has been staggering. Numbers recently released show that the Republicans are within striking distance -- 1.8 percentage points, to be exact -- of gaining a plurality of registered voters. Democrats are leaving their party and switching to the GOP or "other" in droves, and new voters are overwhelmingly registering Republican.

Kentucky's problems are not recent. They've been festering for a long time. The new Republican majority in the legislature is tasked with reversing those fortunes, and it won't happen overnight. I've long said that it will take at least 30 years of uninterrupted GOP control of the executive branch to purge state government of the liberal institutional mindset. Naturally, a Democrat governor will appoint like-minded people to political positions, but the Democrats have abused the state's merit system in the past to pack career civil service jobs with liberal cronies. One investigation showed that in a county where the Republicans enjoyed a huge majority (75-25) in voter registration, Democrats held 75 percent of the state jobs locally. Three decades will give most of the career Democrats time to retire and get them out of state government.

Again, this is not a defense of Mitch McConnell. But when national figures start pointing out Kentucky's educational attainment levels, cancer rates, average household income, number of counties on the "poorest in America" list, and all those other negatives we've heard for years, and then blame McConnell and ask why Kentuckians keep electing him and other Republicans, here's your answer. We don't, at least not historically. The Democrats have run this state for decades, and they still do, although their dominance is fading fast. Republicans aren't to blame for this state's historical shortcomings. They're just now getting their opportunity to fix them. Democrats own every problem this state has. And here's a reminder for those from elsewhere who are ignorant of our state's political history and reality.