BY PATRICK CROWLEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
If there was a congressional race that looked like a lock for the Republicans in the Nov. 3 election, it was the 4th District U.S. House seat in Northern Kentucky.
The GOP had held the seat for 32 years. The district, which stretches from Ashland to near Louisville, has a history of voting Republican, particularly in state and federal elections. Jim Bunning, the popular Southgate Republican who represented the district for six terms, was on top of the ticket as the party's U.S. Senate candidate. In Sen. Gex "Jay" Williams, a state senator from Boone County, the party had an experienced, well-known politician, a darling of the Christian right who was considered an expert in grass-roots campaigning and who received lots of help and money from GOP stars like Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Steve Forbes and Dan Quayle.
But by 8 p.m. election night, Mr. Williams, his supporters and most Northern Kentucky Republicans were blindsided when Democrat Ken Lucas, the former Boone County judge-executive and a 30-year veteran on the local political and community service scene, won the race. And won it big.
Mr. Lucas bested Mr. Williams by a margin of almost 12,000 votes out of nearly 175,000 cast. He took 18 of the district's 22 counties. And while Mr. Lucas lost Boone County by 2,542 votes, he nearly won Kenton County - where Republicans swept every county race on the ballot - and he beat Mr. Williams in Campbell County, where Republicans such as Mr. Bunning and State Senator-elect Katie Stine racked up big margins.
So what happened? How did the Democrats pull off an improbable win in an election that, at least in Northern Kentucky, was dominated by Republicans?
During his election night concession speech, Mr. Williams told a roomful of dejected supporters at the Drawbridge Inn that he felt he failed and let them down. They responded by yelling "no."
But in hindsight, some of the very people who were in that banquet room are now telling a different story.
Leading members of Mr. Williams' own party as well as top players in his political inner circle say the campaign lacked focus, direction, organization and even maturity.
"We got off our message, we never organized, and people were overconfident," said Paula Miller of Fort Mitchell, who helped the campaign raise money.
"This race shouldn't have been lost. And Ken Lucas didn't win it as much as Gex and the campaign lost it," she said.
"We have a good party, a good organization in the 4th District," said Rowan County Republican Party Chairman Doug Morgan. "We can elect candidates when we have good candidates.
"But people here feel Gex is just too far right, that he's not mainstream enough to represent them," said Mr. Morgan, who pointed out Republicans captured three of the four county fiscal court seats in the district for the first time in history.
Other party leaders and people close to the campaign made similar comments, though many did not want their names used.
During a lunch last week, Mr. Williams was - not surprisingly - sullen and a little bitter and down. He pointed the finger at himself as well as others for bad advice.
He wasn't very specific, saying, "I listened to some people I shouldn't have. I didn't run my race."
"Obviously, we should have done better. We could have done better," Mr. Williams. "They ran a great campaign, a better campaign than we did."
Mr. Williams also said the media had emphasized scandal and personal attacks rather than issues.
Democrats and members of Mr. Lucas' election team say they had the better candidate, message and campaign.
"We won because we had the better candidate," said Walton attorney Mark Guilfoyle, the fiery, cunning political tactician who was one of the main architects of Mr. Lucas' victory.
But Mr. Guilfoyle agrees with the Republicans that the constant barrage of tough ads and harsh rhetoric that questioned and challenged Mr. Williams' ethics and background had a major impact with district voters.
"Gex Williams is kind of like the Wicked Witch of the West" from The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Guilfoyle said. "For the last eight or nine years, he's been traversing the countryside, terrorizing Democrats so much that it got to the point where we were a little intimidated by him.
"But when it got right down to it, we threw a bucket of water on him and he melted away just like that old witch," Mr. Guilfoyle said.
Ethics accusations
There's no doubt that the relentless barrage of radio and television advertisements aimed at Mr. Williams, as well as the constant statements about his ethics from Mr. Lucas and his handlers, had a huge impact on the race. The Democrats' strategy kept Mr. Williams from talking about his own platform throughout much of the race.
Mr. Williams was hit for allegedly lying on his resume about attending the U.S. Naval Academy; for supposedly making campaign-related phone calls from the Kentucky Statehouse, a violation of state law; and on claims he illegally benefited from a land deal.
"The Lucas team decided early on the best way to beat Gex Williams was to take off the gloves and keep them off," said Democratic strategist Dave Kramer, a Crestview Hills attorney and Mr. Guilfoyle's law partner.
"The aggressive approach was very effective. And the Lucas team used it and kept using it. The problem with Gex is he had done some things in recent years that made him vulnerable to that kind of strategy."
Still, the resume flap was old news and the Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission cleared him in investigations of the land deal and the phone calls, though the latter ruling came after the election.
But the Lucas campaign effectively defined Mr. Williams as unethical. And in the opinion issued by the ethics commission on the land deal, Mr. Williams was basically called untruthful and was compared to President Clinton and how he lied under oath in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
That gave Mr. Lucas even more fodder. He waved the opinion and talked about it at every public appearance and in every interview over the campaign's final month.
Republicans say Mr. Williams waited too long to respond to the negative attacks.
"Gex allowed (Mr.) Lucas' charges to go unanswered from July through most of the election, and by the time he did respond, it was too late," said 4th District Republican Party Chairman Damon Thayer of Crittenden.
"Like (Kentucky U.S. Sen.) Mitch McConnell always says, a charge unanswered is a charge believed. And people believed what Ken Lucas was saying," Mr. Thayer said.
"Early on, we were hampered by the lack of funds, and when we had the money, it was too late," Mr. Williams said. "But frankly, we didn't respond to the negative attacks, which were outright lies, and we should have responded in the media."
Other Republicans and people in and close to the Williams camp said Mr. Williams was overconfident, even cocky after the May primary - in which he easily beat Mr. Bunning's hand-picked candidate, Fort Mitchell attorney Rick Robinson.
"Registered Republicans weren't receiving any direct mail in the last month of the campaign," Ms. Miller said. "How did he expect to win by not targeting Republicans? He was overconfident and he got outworked by Ken Lucas and the Democrats."
For now, Mr. Williams said he is going to return to computer consulting and "not worry about politics." But he said people have already approached him about running against Mr. Lucas in 2000.
"If I ever run again," he said, his near-constant smile replaced by a scowl. "I'll run my race my way. And I'll win."
