THE GREAT RACE ACROSS THE GOBI DESERT

Not many people would think a grueling four day footrace across the rugged terrain of western Kentucky would be their idea of "fun." But to Dr. Robert Haugh, a Paducah pathologist, the race is just his kind of adventure.

Dr. Haugh, along with a group of racing friends, took on the challenge last March, as part of a race organized by a group called "Racing the Planet." The group organizes a series of four desert footraces each year, including races across the Sahara and Antartica. The Gobi Desert "Great Race" involved daily treks of 25 to 50 miles per day for 4 days across snowy mountain passes and a hot, dry desert landscape. Teammembers carry all their necessaries, including food, clothing and a sleeping bag on their backs. Additional water was supplied only at a couple of stops each day.

The Gobi is located in an isolated central Asian region on the very western end of China, which is actually closer to Pakistan than to the Chinese capital of Beijing far to the east. Dr. Haugh says the population was primairly muslim supported primarily by subsistence farming. Travel is either by foot, camel, donkey cart, or the rare motorcycle.

Most families he met along the race route lived in adode-style huts and cooked with clay ovens, and may have appeared drab on the outside, but were filled with bright colors and oriental rugs on the inside. The women's native dress was also quite colorful and beautiful.

Dr. Haugh's team started out strong in the race, but on the third day, he and another teammate fell ill from tainted water. Despite suffering through the longest 50 mile leg of the race with dysentery, the group ended up placing third. A great finish considering that some 20 to 25 teams started out, but only about 10 finished the punishing footrace due to injuries.

Dr. Haugh's next adventurous goal will be to race in the hottest race (across the Sahara) and in the coldest race (the Iditarod Trail in Alaska) both in the same year.

IS THE REPUBLICAN ERA OVER IN KENTUCKY?

Bill Bartleman, a political writer for the Paducah Sun for more than 20 years, posed that question in an overview of the brief rise and fall of Republican Party in what has been traditionally a Democratic state government. Kentucky voters broke with tradition In 2003, by electing the first Republican governor in 32 years, and only the second in some 100 years.

Bartleman said U.S. Congressman Ernie Fletcher was swept into the governor's office for a couple of reasons. He was a "queaky clean' candidate, which was appealing to the voters still reeling from Democrat Governor Paul Patton's recent extra-marital affair. While Ernie Fletcher was not perceived as a politician himself, he had Kentucky's most powerful Republican politician, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, calling the shots for him in the gubernatorial campaign.

"Ernie Fletcher might have been in the driver's seat of the campaign bus, but it was a bus driven by Mitch McConnell with a remote control," he said.

Governor Fletcher's administration got off to a rocky start, and Bartleman blamed that on the people brought in to advise the newly-elected governor. "He was surrounded by the wrong people who didn't understand Frankfort." He said most were young, congressional staffers, who didn't have a good grasp of Kentucky politics, and no appetite for telling the governor when he was wrong. "They were 'yes' men," he said.

The administration would soon come under pressure from a hiring scandal, which Bartleman feels the administration politically mishandled. He feels that if Governor Fletcher had maintained that mistakes were made, and steps would be taken to correct them, he might have survived in his bid for a second term. Instead, the governor went on the defensive. He pardoned the members of the administration implicated in the scandal and then fired them. Perhaps, even more importantly, his biggest supporter, Senator McConnell, remained silent throughout the affair.

Even so, Bartleman thought Fletcher still had a shot at being re-elected. He did well in the Republican primary, but made fatal missteps in the general election against Democrat Steve Beshear, including taking a strong stand against casino gaming. Despite the fact that polls showed some 87% of Kentuckians favored putting the idea on the ballot, the Fletcher campaign maintained opposition to putting it to a vote. Beshear handily won the governor's mansion by 17 points.

Bartleman isn't quite ready to call it the death of the Republican Party's influence in state politics, however. He says Kentuckians no longer vote the party line, evidenced by the fact that two Republicans managed to hang onto to their state offices this fall.

He also predicted that Senator McConnell would win yet another term, but perhaps by not as large of a margin of victory as in the past.

NEXT WEEK

December 5, 2007 - Kate Lochte from WKMS Radio