Kentucky governor fighting probe

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- For the past few months, Governor Ernie Fletcher has been doing about everything he can to fend off a criminal investigation into alleged political hiring and firing by his administration. But the investigation has steamed on, and seems to be getting closer to Fletcher himself.

Eleven current or former members of his administration have been indicted so far in the probe by Kentucky's attorney general.

While there has been little or no evidence to publicly connect Fletcher, a Republican, to any wrongdoing, his efforts to thwart the investigation -- including his refusal to testify and his issuing of a blanket pardon to anyone charged -- seem to have done serious damage to him politically.

The first-term governor's approval ratings have sunk, and he has become isolated from other members of the GOP.

''You've got to wonder at what point it becomes a death spiral," said Michael Baranowski, a political science professor at Northern Kentucky University.

Prosecutors have accused Fletcher's administration of handing out jobs on the basis of political affiliation, in violation of a 1960 Kentucky civil service law.

According to court records, a transportation department inspector was fired for supporting Fletcher's Democratic opponent in the last election, a former Democratic lawmaker was supposedly given a highway job for supporting Fletcher, and the nephew of a GOP official was hired instead of someone more qualified.

Attorney General Greg Stumbo, a Democrat, opened the investigation in May after a veteran transportation employee showed up on his doorstep with mounds of e-mails and documents.

At first, Fletcher said mistakes may have been made in hiring. But then he adopted an attack strategy, dismissing the investigation as a political witch hunt conducted by an attorney general intent on winning Fletcher's job.

Then, as the indictments crept closer to Fletcher, the governor and his lawyers criticized the civil service law as antiquated and vague, attacked the grand jury as a pawn of prosecutors, and dismissed the alleged crimes -- most of them misdemeanors punishable by a year or less in jail -- as tantamount to fishing out of season.

In late August, Fletcher announced a pardon of the first nine people indicted and anyone else who might be charged, not including himself.

''I cannot allow state government to continue to be consumed by this game of political 'gotcha,' paralyzing our ability to serve you, the people of Kentucky," Fletcher, a 52-year-old former congressman and Kentucky's first Republican governor in three decades, said in a televised, statewide address from the Capitol Rotunda.

One of those pardoned was later indicted again. And the question of whether the governor can pardon people before they have even been charged is a matter of legal dispute.

So far, no one has been convicted or pleaded guilty. Stumbo has said he was duty-bound to investigate the allegations.