Gerth: Jamie Comer, Craig Greenberg, Mitch McConnell and the other 2023 Leftover Turkeys

According to the USDA’s “Turkey Market News Report,” American turkey slaughterhouses killed more than 172 million birds by the week ending Nov. 4 this year.

That’s seven million more birds than they killed by the same week last year – a sure sign that we’ve got a bumper crop of turkeys this year for our 16^th annual “Leftover Turkeys,” a recounting of the political miscues, misstatements and miscreants of the past year.

We’ve got so many Leftover Turkeys this year, in fact, I’m starting to regret having the guys from 1-800-got-junk haul off my old garage refrigerator a few weeks ago.

Good thing we can all partake in our feast of governmental goofs and get rid of this stuff.

Leading our feast of the forgotten fowl this year has to be U.S. Rep. Jamie Comer, the 1^st District Republican who might have been finishing his second term as governor if not for his screwup in 2015 when he leaked emails suggesting that he had physically abused a girlfriend while in college. (He admitted earlier this year he was behind the leak.)

But that’s not even why he’s on our list this year. No siree, bob.

He’s on the list because of his ongoing attempt to find something, anything, to smear Joe Biden by using his chairmanship of the House Oversight Committee to spread innuendo. The problem is, every time he thinks he comes up with something, his claims fall apart.

What was really interesting was to watch him completely flake out on Nov. 14 when another congressman accused him of loaning his brother $200,000 – the same “crime” for which Comer and other Republicans have accused Biden. (Comer, who is apparently 12 years old, retorted that the other member of Congress looked “like a Smurf.”)

Then there is Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, who ran for office pledging transparency.

But in his year in office, Greenberg has been anything but transparent. For heaven’s sake, he won’t even tell us why his wife, Rachel, needs an office or what she does in the office all day.

His office has denied she has a staff, but at least one former intern put on social media that she had worked for Rachel Greenberg in the mayor’s office.

If he doesn’t come clean, voters in three years might want to show Greenberg that they elected him − and not her − to be mayor … for one term and one term only.

Next up is Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer.

Before Gov. Andy Beshear had even claimed reelection, Thayer was attacking him … and in the most childish way.

“If he’s reelected, it’s not going to be a good four years for him, I can tell you that right now,” he said. “He’ll be more irrelevant in his second term than he was in his first, and I will lead the way in that irrelevancy.”

And then he went on to say, “The truth is, I’ve learned he wasn’t very popular in high school. He was the victim of frequent swirlies where he got his head stuck in a toilet and flushed by people who didn’t like him.”

What?

This guy makes Jamie “Smurf-boy” Comer seem mature. I mean, come on. Grow up.

What Thayer doesn’t understand is that Beshear was relevant when it came to the pandemic, when it came to floods in the east and tornadoes in the west and when it came to a host of other things he did while the legislature was out of session.

He, in fact, was so relevant that even the people in Thayer’s Senate district voted to reelect him. According to Robert Kahne, a local data scientist and political junkie who crunched vote totals for me, Beshear won Thayer’s 17^th Senate district by 376 votes – or about 1% of the votes cast.

This, mind you, in a district where Republicans make up 51% of voters and Democrats only 37%. Looks like the voters in Thayer’s district think more of Beshear than Thayer does. Bet this makes Thayer angry enough to toss his Christmas tree into the yard.

Next up is state Rep. Pamela Stevenson, who had everything she needed to be Kentucky’s next attorney general – except a Kentucky law license.

For engaged voters who knew her background, a Kentucky law license shouldn’t have been a big deal. Stevenson spent her career as a U.S. Air Force officer in the Judge Advocate General's (JAG) Corps.

The fact that she didn’t have a Kentucky license doesn’t mean she wasn’t qualified, but politically speaking, lack of if made her a dead duck ... er ... Leftover Turkey.

The problem is, the voting public isn’t always made up of engaged voters. Instead, it is made up of far too many people who learn about candidates only from 30-second television spots and 280-character social media posts.

When the Republicans figured out she didn’t have a law license, Stevenson’s slim hopes of winning in a Republican state were dashed. She should have seen this coming and got a Kentucky law license before she even filed to run.

The next Leftover Turkey goes to the entire Republican Party, which spent the last year attacking children about their gender identities in hopes it would win elections for the GOP.

Yeah. Attacking kids. Always a good way to win elections.

They attacked them throughout the 2023 General Assembly with bills designed to belittle transgender children. Republican Kelly Craft continued it in her gubernatorial campaign in which she spent a gazillion of her husband’s dollars to be humiliated in the primary.

And Daniel Cameron continued it in the general election.

(Both Craft and Cameron would have qualified for individual Turkeys if not for this: Craft for implying in an ad she had a child who died because of a drug addiction, and Cameron for acting as if he were the victim after a Beshear ad ran featuring a young woman who was raped by her stepfather.)

All the while, they were egged on by Riley Gaines, the former University of Kentucky swimmer who made more out of a fifth-place finish in the NCAA championships – oops, tied for fifth place finish – than anyone in history.

They should all be ashamed of themselves.

Next up is Jefferson County Schools Superintendent Marty Polio, who oversaw the worst first day in school district history when students were still sitting on buses at nearly 10 p.m.

First days of school are always dicey as bus drivers are learning new routes and can’t always get students where they need to be on time, but this year it was different – and far worse – than ever before.

The district ended up shutting down for the better part of a week so it could rework the transportation plan – something that it should have done weeks earlier. Pollio ultimately removed Chief Operations Officer Chris Perkins, who had been in charge of transporting students.

It was a huge embarrassment not only to the district, but to everyone who had supported the district’s efforts in past years.

It's not like bus problems have been fixed either. Earlier this month bus drivers organized a sickout with 87 calling in on one day and 143 on another to protest long hours and unruly students.

The Kentucky General Assembly also gets a Turkey for its failure over the years to fully fund transportation. The debacle in Jefferson County was years in the making.

The Louisville Metro Council doesn’t escape the fate of the uneaten gobbler this year.

Councilwoman Donna Purvis makes our list because of her silly ordinance that would have banned grilling on decks. She never explained what she was trying to do, but she thankfully withdrew her proposal before it could have been defeated.

(It’s a good thing. If her ordinance passed, she’d be eating her gobbler raw next year.)

But even worse – far worse – is Councilman Anthony Piagentini.

He worked to obtain a $40 million grant for a company called Louisville Healthcare CEO – and then he accepted a $240,000 contract with the company. The Louisville Metro Council is considering expelling him for ethics violations. The FBI should be investigating him as well.

Finally, we occasionally give someone a frozen turkey – an award to someone who does something sometimes years in advance that in the end, comes back to bite him or her in the butt.

This year, that honor goes to U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who sold his soul to appoint Supreme Court justices who would strike down Roe v. Wade. He protected Donald Trump from impeachment when he did impeachable things. He blocked Barack Obama from appointing a moderate to the court when the appointment was rightfully his.

In the summer of 2022, the court struck down Roe as expected, but what happened next wasn’t so easily predictable. State after state has rejected state-level abortion controls, and in Kentucky the issue played a key role in Cameron, McConnell’s protégé, losing the governor’s race to Andy Beshear.

Next year, it could well play an outsized role in giving the U.S. House back to the Democrats and keeping McConnell’s Republicans in the Senate’s minority.

Unfortunately, there are more Turkeys than we have room for here. But that’s always the case, isn’t it. Happy Thanksgiving and don’t eat too many leftovers.

Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.

More from Gerth: Kentucky’s attorney general should uphold the Constitution, not just ‘back the blue’

Gerth on Downtown Louisville: Gerth: Downtown businesses' parking lot fight called 'shakedown'

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Jamie Comer, Craig Greenberg, Mitch McConnell named Leftover Turkeys