FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - Alison Lundergan Grimes is the latest Democratic Senate candidate to call for building the Keystone XL oil pipeline, but the Kentucky secretary of state’s move doesn’t seem to have cost her support among environmental groups who want to unseat Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.
It’s evidence that campaign wrangling over Keystone XL is about more than the project itself. It’s also about the battle for control of the Senate in the November midterm elections, with Republicans within striking distance of assuming the majority. Also on display are long-standing partisan divides between the energy industry, which tends to support Republicans, and environmentalists, who generally support Democrats.
Many oil, gas and coal interests want McConnell to become the agenda-setting majority leader. Green advocacy groups want to keep things as they are, with Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada leading a Democratic majority that’s generally more in line with environmentalists’ concerns - even if the Democratic caucus includes industry-friendly senators from energy-producing states, from Sen. Mary Landrieu’s Louisiana to Sen. Mark Begich’s Alaska.
That means Grimes can get away with endorsing the Keystone XL pipeline that many environmental activists loathe. On the same day Grimes revealed her support for the pipeline to The Associated Press this week, a national group dedicated to blocking it announced it would spend $500,000 to support her effort to unseat McConnell.
McConnell’s campaign seized on the politics of strange bedfellows.
“One of two things is happening,” spokeswoman Allison Moore said in a written statement. “Either Alison Lundergan Grimes has given these groups assurances that she’s not giving to Kentuckians, or the partisanship of these groups exceeds their stated environmental goals.”
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky lawmaker is pledging to hold hearings on prison medical issues after an inmate at a maximum-security facility starved to death on a hunger strike.
State Rep. Brent Yonts, D-Greenville, said Thursday he will ask during committee hearings later this year for an explanation of the handling of 57-year-old James Kenneth Embry. Yonts also said he would look into prison funding, staffing and the hiring of medical personnel.
“This may represent a total failure of the medical system and medical providers at the prison,” Yonts said.
An Associated Press story this week revealed Embry’s hunger strike and death in January at the Kentucky State Penitentiary. Administrators fired the prison’s lead doctor, barred a contract nurse from working there and put two other medical staffers on leave while the state moves to dismiss them. The lead physician, Dr. Steve Hiland of Eddyville, said he was on vacation out of the country at the time of Embry’s death and never saw the inmate. He remains in private practice.
The Kentucky Department of Corrections asked the Attorney General’s Office to begin criminal investigation after The AP asked about Embry’s death. Embry had a little more than three years left to serve on a nine-year sentence when he died after refusing 35 of 36 meals and dropping 32 pounds in the last month of his life.
Yonts said no dates have been set for the hearings and he’s reluctant to call inmates to testify publicly in Frankfort.
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FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - Former state Auditor Crit Luallen says she will not run for governor in 2015.
Luallen has been mentioned as a possible Democratic contender as Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear finishes his second term.
In a written statement, Luallen said Thursday she is passionate about Kentucky’s future but decided not to run because it was the best decision for her family.
Luallen’s decision could open the door for Attorney General Jack Conway, a Luallen ally, to seek the Democratic nomination. Current state Auditor Adam Edelen is also considering running for governor.
Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo has asked Democrats to delay their candidacies until after the November elections, in which Alison Lundergan Grimes is running for U.S. Senate and Democrats are trying to keep control of the state House of Representatives.
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The University of Kentucky will loosen its longstanding alcohol ban to allow legal drinking at some places on the Lexington campus, school President Eli Capilouto announced Thursday.
In another policy shift, the state’s flagship school said it will extend its code of student conduct to apply to student behavior at places off campus.
The changes, coming after a lengthy review, are expected to take effect in the upcoming fall semester, the school said.
UK said it will revise the campus alcohol policy to allow some legal drinking under guidelines and conditions that weren’t specified. The school didn’t immediately say where alcohol would be permitted. A committee will review those issues, said UK spokesman Jay Blanton.
“We recognize that our current policy has not limited drinking by students,” he said. “It has only served to change where they drink. … We believe that a better approach to student well-being, health and safety, and to our neighbors, is to create a safe, legal and responsible environment for our students.”
UK has banned alcohol on campus since 1998, with a couple of exceptions where alumni and faculty gather.
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