Father Delahanty: Here are my thoughts on the recent election in the Kentucky General Assembly and
the repercussions for our movement to abolish the death penalty through legislative action as opposed to
an appellate court decision (like Washington state). | will leave it entirely up to you as to how widely you
want to forward this memo to anyone in our movement; | will be speaking candidly (as always) and
wouldn't want the memo to fall into the hands of our opponents.
State Senate: No real change. We lost Sen. Dorsey Ridley, a member of the Senate Democrat
leadership, who was at least approachable if not really with us. | had a great rapport with him from our
days together in the House and will miss him. His place was taken by GOP Rep. Robbie Mills who is not
with us but is pleasant and approachable. The other freshman Senator is another GOP House member,
Matt Castlen, who is taking Sen. Joe Bowen's place. Mr. Castlen is also not with us and strongly so at this
juncture. He's almost hostile. (Just as an aside, Owensboro is so heavily Catholic, | don't know why we
aren't more successful with the Daviess County legislative delegation; the nuns at Brescia College,
particularly its president, used to OWN Speaker Don Blandford, a claim not too many people or entities
could make back then). The only slight silver lining in the Senate is the imminent retirement of Democrat
floor leader Sen. Ray Jones of Pikeville who was elected Pike Co. Judge on Tuesday, as expected. He is/
was very strongly against us (on a Benvenuti-esque level) and his replacement, to be filled in a special
election probably in January, cannot possibly be any worse than Jones no matter which political party
wins this soon-to-be-open seat. We have no real expectation of any success in the Senate any time soon,
or even any consideration given the pronounced conservative GOP dominance of this chamber UNLESS
we can convince moderate Republican Sens. like Julie Adams or Alice Kerr to take on this issue as a
cause and be willing to work zealously for passage of an abolition bill, putting incessant pressure on their
leadership and willing to trade votes, etc. That's a very long shot right now. And, I'm sorry, but don't even
mention Senator Gerald Neal.
State House: First a little history: We have been making incremental progress in the House over the last
three years. With Democrats in control of the House in 2016, we had 14 sponsors (of both parties) behind
an abolition bill (HB 203) with our primary sponsor being a Republican, Rep. David Floyd of Bardstown.
This bill failed by one vote from being favorably voted out of the House Judiciary committee. In 2017, with
the House now under GOP control, we had 18 sponsors for an abolition bill (HB 251) that was sponsored
by freshman GOP Rep. Jason Nemes. The bill went nowhere as the Judiciary Committee in the House is
chaired by Rep. Joe Fischer, a stout foe of our movement despite ongoing and aggressive efforts to
persuade him to at least hold a hearing. In 2018, we improved slightly to 19 sponsors for an outright
abolition bill (HB 155) which had a primary sponsor Rep. Chad McCoy, also of Bardstown (Rep. Floyd's
successor). We should have had 20 as Rep. Kevin Sinnette promised to co-sponsor, but, for some
reason (probably his running this year for a seat on the Court of Appeals), he never followed through.
This bill was also referred to the House Judiciary committee where, although "posted" for committee
consideration during the 2018 legislative session, was not heard. (Although there was a hearing on the
issue in this committee during the recent interim.) So we continue to gain co-sponsors and visibility, at
least in the House. Progress is progress. The next move, assuming Rep. McCoy is willing to again be
primary sponsor is to galvanize him into some kind of scorched earth effort to get Chmn. Fischer to again
"post" the bill but this time to also have a hearing on it with an up or down vote to report it favorably. Rep.
McCoy probably won't agree to undertake this kind of Herculean effort absent hard evidence we have the
votes to get such a measure out of committee and even out of the Rules committee after that. We're
going to have to see what the makeup of the House Judiciary committee is before we can organize such
an effort. Assuming House leadership keeps the membership of that committee at its present 21
members, there will be at least 6 new members on Judiciary with the defeat/retirement of Reps.
Benvenuti, Brown, Morgan, Owens, Sinnette, and Watkins.
New House members, an Analysis: It was, on the surface, kind of a wash for us in this week's election
as far as the loss of known supporters and known opponents. But there were some seismic changes
presenting us with lots of new opportunities to gain even more adherents to our position with the election
to the House of a number of new Democratic women members, most of them seeming to be overtly
liberal to very liberal (judging from their respective campaign platforms and websites). All in all, if a
number of extremely close results hold up, there will be 30 freshman members of the incoming House not
including former Reps. Jim Glenn and Cluster Howard. There is an exact equal split between R's (15 new
members, 3 of whom are women) and D's (15 new members, 10 of whom are female). We lost faithful
allies and HB 155 co-sponsors Reps. Wayne, Wuchner, Simpson, and Owens (plus the non-signer
Sinnette, if you want to count him), but we also got rid of implacable foes like Reps. Benvenuti, Gerald
Watkins, Will Coursey, and the immortal C. Wesley Morgan.
Obviously, attempts should be made immediately to contact and meet with the 30 new members either
in their districts back home or in Frankfort as soon as they are assigned offices and staff. We should
contact, again, on an expedited basis, our own supporters to see if some of these folks are even on our
side, RIGHT NOW, and we might not even know it. Copious notes should be made of these meetings and
reported back to our Board, with their impressions and results.If favorable, we need to ask them if they
will agree to co-sponsor our next bill in the 2019 session. Some of this work can even be done at the new
member orientation session the LRC will host December 18-19 in Frankfort, although it might be
problematic that we can reach out and meet with for any appreciable length of time with all 30 of these
people. | mean, they won't even have yet a place of their own to meet with us, although we need to check
(and | will do this) with LRC to see if they will in fact have offices by that time. Here are the new members
and their areas:
3rd District (Paducah): Randy Bridges (R)
5th District (Calloway, Trigg): Larry Elkins (R)
6th District (Marshall County; Benton): Chris Freeland (R)
11th District (Henderson): Rob Wiederstein (D)
14th District (Owensboro) Scott Lewis (R)
17th District (Bowling Green, part; outer Warren County): Steve Sheldon (R)
20th district (Bowling Green; city): Patti Minter (D) note: either is now or was a Board member of KY.
ACLU; got to think she's with us, heart and soul.
27th District (Meade County; Brandenburg): Nancy J. Tate (R)
Louisville Districts: All women; all Democrats:
31st District (U'town, Hikes Point): Josie Raymond
32nd District (St. Matthews; Lyndon; Hurstbourne): Tina Bojanowski
35th District (Eastern parkway area; Germantown, Schnitzelburg; Fairdale): Lisa Willner
40th district (Shively; city of Lou.): Nima Kulkarni
48th District (East End; Prospect; Indian Hills; Norton commons): Maria Sorolis
**** All of these women are thought to be liberals and, except for Jim Wayne's district (35th),
defeated/are replacing male legislators of both parties who either opposed us outright or were
indifferent to us.
Also:
43rd District (West End; extending out to parts of St. Matthews): Charles Booker (D)
Back to the rest of the state:
49th District (Shepherdsville): Thomas Huff (R)
56th District (Versailles, part of Franklin County outside of Frankfort): Joe Graviss (D)
61st District (Grant County,others): Savannah Maddox (R)
65th District (Covington): Charles "Buddy" Wheatley (D)
66th District (Boone County; No. KY): Ed Massey (R) -- Father, you told me this guy is already strongly for
us; correct?
71st District (Garrard; Rockcastle Counties) Travis Brenda (R) -- this is the guy who defeated GOP floor
leader Jonathan Schell in this year's primary.
72nd District (Paris; Bourbon county, others): Matthew Koch (R)
73rd District (Winchester; Clark County; part of Madison Co.): Les Yates (R)
81st District (Richmond; part of Madison co.): Deanna Frazier (R)
87th District Middlesboro; Bell county): Adam Bowling (R) -- son of former House Judiciary chair, Mike
Bowling
88th District (Lexington): Cherylynn Stevenson (D)
90th District (London; Laurel County, part): Derek Lewis (R)
95th District (Prestonsburg; Floyd Co.; part of Pike co.): Ashley Tackett (D)
96th District (Carter; Lawrence Counties; Eastern KY): Kathy Hinkle (D)
97th District (Johnson; Morgan; other counties): Craig Lindon (D)
100th District (Ashland; most of Boyd county): Terri Branham Clark (D)
These are definitely the first targets of opportunity and I'd say, overall, we picked up anywhere from 6-8
net new supporters of our cause. Let's get them lined up now and committed and perhaps a few more of
the new folks we don't even know yet might be with us. Thanks.
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