GALBRAITH MISSED SOME CHANCES

There have been plenty of eulogies already for perennial candidate
Gatewood Galbraith, who died last week at age 64 at his Lexington
home, so this column isn't going to focus on his wit, his humanity,
his intellect and his toothy grin.

No, what hasn't been talked about much is the fact that Galbraith
missed a real opportunity to more effectively push for the things
about which he cared deeply because of his marijuana activism and
because he refused to step onto a smaller stage and run in races he
could afford.

Had he chosen a more traditional path, because of his wit, his
humanity, his intellect and his toothy grin, he may have been wildly
successful; no Kentucky candidate in generations has been able to hold
audiences like Galbraith.

But Galbraith will always be remembered as a character who lost all
nine races he ever ran, only once getting more than 25 percent of the
vote.

Despite that, people shouldn't write him off like many other perennial
candidates we have seen in Kentucky, such as Tommy Klein, Doris Binion
and Otis Hensley, who seemed to be running for the sake of running.

He had real ideas, some of which arguably could have helped move
Kentucky forward.

Galbraith was an environmentalist who abhorred mountaintop removal,
the coal mining method that blasts away the summits of mountains to
get at the coal underneath.

He complained that the state's economic development policy sells its
citizens short by rewarding companies that bring jobs that pay less
than living wages.

And at a time when college tuition is skyrocketing as state revenues
fail to keep pace with inflation, he called for $5,000 vouchers for
all high school graduates to be used at any college or trade school in
the state.

He ranted about the entrenched politicians who were responsible for
the corruption exposed during Operation Boptrot, saying that other
elected officials either knew about what was going on and should have
stopped it, or they didn't know what was going on, which he said meant
they were "too dumb" to hold elective office.

Although a Democrat most of his life, Galbraith railed against both
parties for their inability to work together and find solutions to
problems that have plagued the state since he was growing up in
Nicholas County.

"I'm a perennial candidate because Kentucky has perennial problems,"
he said often.

But Galbraith never had the money to get his message out in his seven
statewide races or his two congressional campaigns.

His best showing came in the 2002 6th District congressional race when
he ran as an independent and got 26 percent of the vote in a year that
the Democrats did not put up an opponent to incumbent Republican Ernie
Fletcher.

Former state Democratic Party Chairman Terry McBrayer told the
Lexington Herald-Leader that he urged Galbraith to run for smaller
offices in which he could raise the money needed to mount a legitimate
campaign but that Galbraith never listened.

It could be that Galbraith never expected to win and simply wanted a
statewide audience for his ideas.

He may have known that he didn't had a chance after his early activism
for legalized marijuana and his 1983 campaign for agriculture
commissioner on a pro-pot platform.

He was smart enough to figure out that the two times he filed for
bankruptcy and the time he was arrested for failing to pay child
support (all because of financial troubles brought on by past
campaigns) made winning unlikely.

And though he complained to reporters about pigeonholing him as a
"pro-marijuana" candidate, and altered his position to favor only
legalizing medical marijuana and the decriminalization of marijuana,
he couldn't help himself from drifting back to talking about drugs and
what he considered a failed war on them.

He believed that marijuana had cured him of asthma. "How can I not
tell people about it?" his running mate in the 2011 election, Dea
Riley, recalled him telling her.