Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Press Release: Family group calls committee chair contest, "a defining moment for the Democratic Party"

For Immediate Release
January 2, 2007 A. D.

Contact: Martin Cothran
Phone: 859-329-1919

LEXINGTON, KY. —A state family advocacy organization is calling the contest for the chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee a “defining moment” for the Kentucky Democratic Party. Democratic leaders in the Kentucky House of Representatives are poised to make a decision that will tell us where they want to take the state politically and socially,” said Martin Cothran, senior policy analyst with The Family Foundation of Kentucky.

The committee chairmanship, vacated when its former chairman, Gross Lindsey (D-Henderson), lost his seat in last year’s legislative primary, could be given to Kathy Stein (D-Lexington). Stein is considered one of the House’s most liberal members because of her outspoken and ardent pro-abortion and pro-gay rights positions.

“For House leaders to place Kathy Stein at the head of a committee that deals with family-related legislation would be seen as a message to mostly conservative Kentucky voters that the Kentucky Democratic Party has arrived as a liberal party and that they are burning the ships.”

“The selection of Rep. Stein for Judiciary chair this week would be seen by many Kentuckians as a signal that the Kentucky Democrat Party is nothing more than the state branch of a liberal national party,” said Cothran, “and would, in one fell swoop, eliminate what little hope now exists for the passage of pro-life and pro-family legislation in the House. Cothran argued that Stein’s record indicates she is everything Democrats in Kentucky have said in recent years that they are not: “a San Francisco Democrat.”

Cothran said that there are a lot of good conservative Democrats in the House, many of then new. “These are the people who are the future of the Democratic Party in this state. But a decision like this could threaten that future.”

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