KENTUCKY’S
KING
Dyche reports in his biography
that the young politician’s message did not include any Republican branding. “Breaking with local
tradition,” Dyche wrote, “he ran
his campaign independently from
the Jefferson County GOP apparatus and refused to share a slate
with the Republican candidates in
other races down the ballot.”
While he used negative ads to
batter Hollenbach — most notably
one that featured a farmer arguing that Hollenbach’s statements
on taxes amounted to shoveling
manure — Musson and Dyche recall McConnell showing a soonto-be-discarded restraint. He
chose not to run an ad addressing the court-ordered busing that
had caused so much upheaval two
years earlier. Hollenbach had no
say over the busing but had fought
it in court in an embarrassing and
losing effort. Another potential
ad featuring the young victims of
a high-profile traffic accident was
similarly deemed insensitive.
McConnell sealed his victory
with the surprise endorsement of
the editorial board of the CourierJournal. The young politician told
Louisville Today that the daily’s
nod showed voters that “the community isn’t going to go to hell if
HUFFINGTON
08.11.13
“FIRST TIME I EVER SAW HIM,
I MUST ADMIT I WAS
AMUSED ... I CAN REMEMBER
THINKING TO MYSELF,
‘I BET HE CARRIED A BRIEFCASE
IN THE THIRD GRADE.’”
you have a Democratic mayor and
a Republican county judge. It’s OK
to split your ticket.”
Once in office, McConnell governed with bipartisanship in
mind. He became “very good” at
compromising, Musson says. He
hired some of Louisville’s leading
feminists for his inner circle and
began forming coalitions with his
Democratic counterparts on the
county legislature. “He expected
more from me and thought I could
do more than I did for myself,”
Meme Sweets Runyon says. “He
demanded a lot from me and insisted that I could do it.”
McConnell sought to diversify
the county’s powerful boards and
commissions, which had great
sway over planning and development, and had historically been
stacked with elites.
He invested in significantly
expanding the Jefferson Memorial Forest, adding close to 2,000
acres. His administration also