Who better to guide the Commonwealth and country: a successful corporate leader and municipal chief executive, or a stalwart champion of civil liberties and tribune against high taxes and federal regulations?
With Lexington Mayor Jim Gray’s bid to unseat Sen. Rand Paul now set following convincing primary wins, both candidates spoke with Business Lexington to share their ideas and prescriptions for the economic health of the state and nation.
Paul, the Republican incumbent, and his Democratic challenger offer Kentucky voters starkly different policies, priorities and philosophies of governance and economic development.
In the coming months, Paul and Gray will criss-cross the Commonwealth meeting voters and launch multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns in an effort to win a race that’s increasingly seen as competitive and consequential in a year when control of the Senate could be up for grabs.
Personal politics, family business
For all their differences, the candidates share more than a distinctly Kentuckian reserve and self-possession that can be read alternately as measured or somewhat aloof. Both men followed the footsteps of influential fathers, with each stepping from those long shadows to create distinctive careers.
As he has throughout his political career, the 62-year-old Gray is championing his private-sector experience helping to grow his family’s design and building company, Gray Construction, into a global success.
“I’m a businessman who just happens to be mayor,” he insists. “I’m the only candidate that has real experience in creating jobs and diversifying an economy. The work that I’ve done in recruiting industry and recruiting manufacturing plants is recognized in Kentucky and beyond our borders.”
Founded in 1960 by Gray’s father, James Norris Gray, Gray Construction specializes in advanced manufacturing facilities and claims more than 900 projects built in the United States and many more around the world. Jim Gray has served as president and CEO of the company and remains chairman of the board. Gray says the company has annual revenue of nearly $1.2 billion and has created tens of thousands of jobs.
“I took those business practices into government and proved that you could do that,” Gray said, who has been Lexington’s chief executive since 2011. Gray says his stewardship has brought growth, below average unemployment and four years of consecutive budget surpluses.
“Lexington really is a model that we can translate and we can take the lessons from Lexington to Washington.”
Like Gray, Paul, the Commonwealth’s junior senator since 2011, has forged an independent path informed by the work of his influential father, former Texas Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Paul.
Sen. Rand Paul, a 53-year-old Bowling Green-based ophthalmologist, swept into office on a Tea Party-powered wave of anti-Washington sentiment.
In addition to the benefits conferred by incumbency and Kentucky’s overall red state leanings, Paul enjoys a national following as a prominent leader for the party’s libertarian wing. As well, Paul has built a reputation on a willingness to challenge or break with party orthodoxy on issues including national security, foreign intervention and civil liberties.
“I’m a distinct voice in the Republican Party and will continue to be so,” Paul said.
However, Paul is pivoting from a bruising and unsuccessful presidential bid, a point the Gray campaign consistently presents as evidence the senator favors personal ambition over the good of the Commonwealth.
But although his ideas failed to connect with enough GOP presidential caucus-goers and primary voters, Paul is confident they still resonate at home.
Where Gray presents his ideas as business-minded pragmatism, Paul’s engagements tend toward the more openly partisan and ideological. In his message of a restrained and shrunken federal government — the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in particular — Paul promises both philosophical purity and economic growth.
“I think there are sort of two visions for the country, and one vision is that of a big centralized government with a lot of central planning, a lot of central regulation, high taxes and a government that’s sort of everywhere all the time,” Paul said. “I have the opposite opinion.
“I think a lot of the election will be about who will defend Kentucky against the regulatory onslaught of Washington.” Paul said. “And without question this is coming from one side.”
Policy and principle
While Kentucky’s economy boasts many bright spots, from bourbon production to aerospace and automobile parts manufacturing, the Commonwealth lags in other regards. Kentucky ranks 44th in per capita personal income, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The unemployment rate, 5.1 percent in May, rates in the lower half nationally.
During his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, Paul proposed abolishing the tax code and replacing it with a flat 14.5 percent tax on both businesses and individuals. As a legislator, he’s sponsored bills including the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, Freedom from Over-Criminalization and Unjust Seizures (FOCUS) Act, and the Protect Small Business Jobs Act of 2016. Paul’s business-related bills focus on reducing taxes and federal regulations.
Mirroring the work of the 113th and 114th U.S. Congresses at large, however, Paul’s initiatives largely have languished in committee. The senator blames the the president for the lack of legislative action, insisting his opposition to Obama’s policies itself is an effort worthy of voters’ consideration.
“We keep getting a little bit of push back from the president,” Paul said. “You know
we just recently passed a repeal of the clean power plant, … the greenhouse gas regulations that President Obama’s put forward. The [U.S.] Supreme Court said he’d gone too far and sent it back to the lower level about three or four months ago. We then voted — the majority of the House and Senate — to repeal it. But it’s then President Obama who vetoes these things. And so with President Obama in office it’s virtually impossible to get legislation through to relieve the regulatory overreach.”
Paul listed recent changes to overtime rules as another target of repeal. In fact, however, Obama has vetoed only nine bills since becoming president, a historically small number not seen since the 1920s. Nonetheless, Paul insists a Sen. Gray would hurt Kentucky by backing Democratic Party policies and its presumptive presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.
“Unless he’s prepared to disown the party that’s been killing Kentucky. You know, if it’s either Obama he’s going to disown or Clinton will he disown or [New York Sen. Charles] Schumer or any of the other Democrats up here that he’d be forced for vote for and with. You have to basically disown all of them. … We’ve just been being killed by the federal government, by the EPA. And I think Kentuckians want someone who will defend against that, not to come up here and support the very people who are hurting us.
“I mean, if you’re a supporter of President Obama or a supporter of Hillary Clinton, you’re a supporter of policies that are terrible for Kentucky.”
Gray, for his part, is wary of being tarred with the well-worn Republican charge that Democrats are waging a “war on coal.”
“Coal is a bridge to the future and regrettably the rug has been pulled out from under the industry,” he said. “Now whether that’s a function of regulation or market forces, that’s the reality, and reality is a good place to start the conversation.”
Again, Gray is counting on his success as
a businessman and city executive to counter such arguments. He also is championing his support of a minimum-wage hike in Lexington, a measure he signed into law in December that will raise the low wage locally to $10.10 per hour over three years.
“What I know people care about is performance and results,” he said. “That’s what voters in Lexington have cared about and that’s what I believe voters in Kentucky will care about. Performance and results, experience and record.”
The road to November
Saying, “we intend to have the resources to wage an effective campaign, and that’s what we’ll do,” Gray hopes to keep the focus on job creation.
“What I heard [during the primary campaign] is what our campaign is really about, it’s all about jobs,” Gray said. “Jobs give purpose and meaning in life, and everyone in the world wants a good job. And this is something I know a lot about.”
Remaining to be seen, however, is whether such pocketbook issues will retain their traditionally predominant place in voters’ decision-making in a campaign season that so far has been anything but a typical.
Gray has shown a willingness to aggressively press topical issues, including whether people on the no-fly list should be prevented from purchasing guns in the wake of the nightclub assault that left 49 dead in Orlando, Florida. And despite his popularity in Lexington, Gray, who is gay, is running statewide less than a year after the gubernatorial election was roiled by a county clerk’s refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
“I believe the voters of Kentucky rise above stereotypes,” Gray said.
With five months to go, the senate race in Kentucky is vying for voters’ attention in a strange campaign season dominated by Paul’s former primary rival, Donald Trump. Despite sharply questioning Trump’s conservative bona fides and fitness for the presidency during the debates, Paul now supports Trump, insisting he would be better for the Commonwealth than a Clinton administration.
“I think there’s really no choice of who will be better for Kentucky,” Paul said.
But Paul said Kentucky voters will choose a senator based on other factors.
“I’m going to run on my record and I think that’ll be sufficient,” Paul said. “I think ultimately people want to know who will defend them against government overreach.”