By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
Democrat Jacqueline Coleman, the ex-high school basketball coach who's running for lieutenant governor, made a slam-dunk of Gov. Matt Bevin's Uber slur.
In a brand new Beshear-Coleman campaign video, she rides shotgun with Lexington schoolteacher Laura Hartke who moonlights as an Uber driver.
During his Paducah debate with Bevin, Attorney Gen. Andy Beshear, the Democratic gubernatorial hopeful said he knew "a teacher that right now is driving an Uber after work to make ends meet and because she’s worried that this governor is going to cut her retirement. That is wrong.”
Bevin replied, “I know a lot of people who drive for Uber actually, and they make a pretty good amount of money doing it, in addition to the other jobs that they have. That’s called America. It’s called freedom and opportunity.”
Hartke is the teacher Beshear took up for and Bevin belittled.
She welcomed Coleman and a videographer to join her on an afternoon Uber shift.
The ad starts with Bevin's "let 'em eat cake" reply to Beshear.
Coleman asks Hartke to describe her workday. She replies, “I’m an early bird, I get up at 4:30, it takes me a little bit to get moving, and then I leave at 6:30, and then I teach all day. A lot of times the money is really good between midnight and, like 3 a.m, so a lot of times that’s when I finish up.
“Every teacher I know, if they don’t have a second income in their house, they are their second income. I’ve watched my co-workers really struggle with that. They either have to decide to miss their second job, or miss their kid’s sporting event. But we’re doing all of this because we love those kids so much."
Coleman says, "“No teacher who works hard to build a bigger, brighter Kentucky should be forced to work a second job just to make ends meet. A Beshear/Coleman Administration will treat the teachers who educate our children with the respect that they deserve, with a hard earned $2,000 across-the-board pay raise. As teachers are forced to do more and more with less, the last thing they need are four more years of Matt Bevin’s insults and bullying.”
Anyway, Bevin evidently thinks he can slur his way to a second term.
"It is an old and true maxim that ‘a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall,'" said another Republican. "So with men, if you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart; which, say what you will, is the great high road to his reason."
He was President Abraham Lincoln, who was born in Kentucky. I can't think of a Kentucky Republican less Lincoln-like than the governor.
"Never let your mouth overload your you-know-what," is an old Kentuckyism that the New England-born Bevin might not know. (Okay, we don't say "you-know-what.")
Anyway, I'd bet hogs will fly and kids will stop shooting hoops from Jordan to Jenkins before Bevin switches to honey or stops demeaning and demonizing anybody who dares disagree with him. Nah, not even then.