From award-winning Web site to teachers’ support, Grayson outrivals opponent

Several people have been talking about the possibility of our Secretary of State Trey Grayson having real competition from Democratic candidate Bruce Hendrickson in November’s election. However, the more I see of Hendrickson, the more I have to think otherwise. In my opinion, Hendrickson is in over his head.

The KET debate last Thursday showed that Grayson was the better candidate. Hendrickson has no clue as to what issues face the office of the secretary of state.

Hendrickson talked about his experience as mayor of Pineville. The people there were so displeased with his performance that they chose not to give him another term. This man seems to be incapable of speaking more than two sentences without uttering something about Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear and his running mate Dan Mongiardo. Which race is Hendrickson running?

If Hendrickson’s negatives weren’t enough to make you think about voting for Grayson, Grayson’s accomplishments, as listed on his Web site, should persuade most people to vote for him.

Grayson’s work with civic education is widely acclaimed. Even teachers — did I forget to mention Hendrickson was a teacher? — endorsed Grayson over their former colleague, according to Grayson’s  Web site. He has modernized the secretary of state’s office by providing more online services.

Grayson’s Web site has won national awards. He continues to make the office more business friendly. With all of these professional accomplishments, he has even proven to be a tenacious campaigner and one hell of a fundraiser. As was reported in The Kentucky Enquirer, just the other night, he shattered the record for a down-ticket candidate by raising $141,000 in one night.

Hendrickson is clearly out of his league here. If he isn’t good enough for his hometown, if he isn’t good enough for our teachers, what makes him good enough for Kentucky?

I’ve said all I will say about campaign stuff for this week. Now I want to shift gears and talk about Conservative Week that UK College Republicans is hosting this week. The goal for the week is to educate students on campus about who we are and about what we, and our candidates, believe. Each day we will have a different event.

As many of you saw, yesterday was Anti-Casino Day. Casinos have proven to be a major issue in this year’s gubernatorial race, and we wanted to highlight the negatives in a fun way. So we had a modified version of cornhole in which people threw “money bags” down the toilet. The whole idea was to show how much money people would have to lose for casinos to be beneficial to the state. We also had available Rep. Bill Farmer’s petition to make cornhole the official game of Kentucky.

Today is Meet Steve Beshear Day. We have a big picture of Beshear and will be providing information about his values and beliefs. I think many of you will be surprised when you find out just how out of touch Beshear is.

Wednesday is Meet Ernie Fletcher Day. We will have a big picture of Gov. Fletcher and will be providing information about his accomplishments while in office. Many more of you will be surprised about what all Fletcher has done as most of his accomplishments have gone unreported by our beloved media.

Thursday is Support the Troops Day. This event will not be partisan or used as a propaganda event. The point is to support our troops by handing out yellow ribbons. As long as our nation is at war, we need to remember the troops. This is our way of doing so.

We will be handing out information about UK College Republicans and about the specific theme for the day everyday we are set up. I hope all of you will come by to learn more about the College Republicans.

Thomas Roberts is the chairman of UK College Republicans. E-mail [email protected].