Kentucky

This is an old pre-election piece from Angie Fenton at the Courier-Journal, but it gives you a taste of what judicial campaigning and pressing the flesh entails.  Is it all work, all play, or little bit of both on the campaign trail?  You decide.

Power party

DJ Reggie Regg kept the dance floor hopping Saturday night at the Yearlings Club's 11th Annual Black College Alumni Dance at the Horseshoe Casino in Elizabeth, Ind..

Kentucky state Sen. Gerald Neal and his wife, Kathy Cooksie-Neal, were among the revelers.

Several judicial candidates also attended the soiree, including Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Lisabeth Hughes Abramson, Jefferson District Judge David Holton, Assistant Jefferson County Attorney Anne Dedman Watkins, attorney Ann Bailey Smith, attorney John VanderToll and Assistant Jefferson County Attorney Katie King.

My [Angie Fenton] favorite moment of the evening? Watching Roger Wilson, president of the civic club, spice things up during the introduction of the organization's membership and groove across the dance floor. He set the tone for the rest of the night.

And here is another 'after the fact' pre-election post, post-election.  Yes, it is work.  Pat Mulvihill is a lawyer with the Jefferson County attorney's office.

Some folks enjoy post-election pause

By Katya Cengel ? kcengel@courier-journal.com ? November 7, 2008

Tuesday morning, Pat Mulvihill was working the Douglass Loop area.
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He stood amid the newspaper racks outside Twig & Leaf restaurant holding a sign for Judge David Holton.

Mulvihill had arrived at 7 a.m. in a Holton T-shirt, left at 9 a.m. for a family funeral and returned that afternoon. He didn't make it home for dinner with his two children, ages 1 and 2. There haven't been many family dinners in the eight months he has worked to support Holton, who lost to Katie King.

But that morning, before he left, he promised his 2-year-old son, Jack, who's almost 3, that "Daddy's going to start coming home now, start having regular dinners together."

Now that the election is over, many who played roles in it -- and some who didn't -- are ready to fill their days with something else. For Mulvihill, a 38-year-old Louisville attorney, that means more dinners with his kids and weekends watching ballgames.

Since March, few days have passed that Mulvihill hasn't done something for the campaign. Weekends and vacation days were spent putting up yard signs, attending events and walking door to door for Holton for the 16th Division seat on Jefferson District Court. If he followed sports, it was on the radio, so on Nov. 14 he plans to attend a University of Kentucky basketball game with his wife.

Mulvihill is ready for a break and is taking his family to Florida Thanksgiving weekend.

"I'm looking forward to it," he said. "It will be relaxing, therapeutic. ?"
Ready for the end

Mark Hebert likes his job. But even the WHAS-TV political reporter said he was ready for the election to be over "about two months ago. That just didn't happen."

Hebert said he was tired of the TV and radio ads and the late-night phone calls.

* * *

Hebert is ready to move on too. Wednesday he was working on a new story -- about who might run against Sen. Jim Bunning in 2010.

"There's always politics in Kentucky," said Hebert. "Every day of the year, there's some political story out there ? waiting for me or someone else to cover."

Reporter Katya Cengel can be reached at (502) 582-4224.