Beshear's second wind

This and that as we continue searching for the winning ticket we’re fairly sure we bought between the fourth and fifth (or was it the sixth and seventh) glass we hoisted in honor of Saturday’s blowout at Churchill Downs:

Welcome to the day after, when some among us awaken to those hungover feelings described so wonderfully by Kris Kristofferson in Sunday Morning Coming Down.

You could say this is Kentucky’s annual Sunday morning coming down, our descent from the high we experience each year as the Kentucky Derby showcases the state’s signature Thoroughbred industry.

Lately, though, the coming down seems to bottom out a little lower every year because the face we show the world on Derby Day increasingly misrepresents the reality of racing in this state.

Sure, we’ll always be able to deliver glitz and glitter on the first Saturday in May because the Kentucky Derby is the greatest two minutes in sports, a race that annually draws up to 20 contenders and provides the best damn display of equine and human heart, strength, traffic skills and riding ability you’ll find in any race anywhere.

But the rest of the year can be a struggle for Kentucky tracks trying to remain competitive with their counterparts in the growing number of states where purses are supplemented by casino and racino gambling.

All of that was supposed to change with the landslide election of Gov. Steve Beshear, who made expanded gambling that would boost the state’s revenue and benefit Kentucky’s racing industry a focal point of his campaign.

But Beshear fumbled away his political capital and momentum early on. House Democratic leaders did their party’s governor no favors with their clumsy handling of the issue. And the Thoroughbred industry, as usual, didn’t seem to get its own act completely together.

And here Kentucky sits on its annual Sunday morning coming down, with no casino gambling amendment on the November ballot, with unmet revenue needs forcing painful cuts in education and human services, and with its racing industry stuck at a competitive disadvantage.

It’s impossible to overstate how badly the Beshear administration flopped during the first General Assembly session of his term.

In addition to casino gambling, he suffered losses on ethics reform and pension reform. And his late-session proposal for a 70-cent increase in the tax on a pack of cigarettes was simply ignored.

Several factors contributed to these failures, but Beshear’s own mistakes assured that most of the blame would fall on him. Small wonder then that his approval rating in the SurveyUSA poll plunged from 62 percent in early January to 38 percent in mid-April.

But once lawmakers left town at the end of the session, Beshear showed he knows a thing or two about exercising gubernatorial power.

He vetoed a highway projects bill, thus giving his administration more say in what roads get built over the next two years.

And the implied threat that he might disband the Council on Postsecondary Education by executive order helped him win a stare-down with that panel over the process for selecting a new CPE president.

Although there were critics in both instances (and the timing of the veto may lead to a court challenge), the two assertions of power proved Beshear is not as weak as he appeared to be during the session.

Indeed, I suspect there came a point during those three-plus months when Beshear and his aides just wanted the session to be over so he could start flexing his gubernatorial muscles in just this fashion.

True, these are small steps back for a governor who has fallen very far very fast. But small though they are, they at least suggest it would be a mistake to think of him as a pushover.

Reach Larry Dale Keeling at (859) 231-3249, 1-800-950-6397, ext. 3249 or lkeeling@herald-leader.com.