Kentucky doesn't just fall left or right on political scale

BARDSTOWN, Ky. -- Kentucky has not made the list of battleground states in this year's presidential election, but that hasn't dampened interest for Kentuckians who say this election is one of the most important they've seen in years.

"I'm 51, and I've heard more talk this year than I ever have," says John Barbour of New Haven.

At last week's Kentucky Bourbon Festival here, south of Louisville, Barbour demonstrated how to make the wooden bourbon barrels he produces for Kentucky Cooperage. He and other voters stopped to talk about what's important to them in this presidential election.

"I want to know what they think about the guy who's up every morning with a lunchbox in a pickup and rolling," Barbour says.

The presidential candidates and their running mates are not very visible in the Bluegrass State, but voters here say interest in the national contest will send them to the polls this November.

"We discuss it at work all the time," says Bob Holsclaw, a bank employee from Bullitt County. "Something needs to be done. I don't believe one person runs the country, but I'm voting."

Holsclaw, 51, says he's ready for a Democrat in the White House because he is fed up with policies that he says have wrongly focused on the war in Iraq and left the country vulnerable to economic hardship.

"They're not taking care of what's going on here at home," he says.

Many people here say the issues they are thinking about mirror those of other states: the economy, the war in Iraq and gas prices.

"What's happening nationally — people losing their homes, their jobs — it's happening here," says John Payne, 53, a distillery worker who lives in Bardstown.

Steve Robertson, Republican Party state chairman, says one issue that sets Kentuckians apart is energy, given the state's large coal reserves.

"Kentucky is really well-positioned to be part of the national energy solution," Robertson says. "A lot of people are really starting to look at the positions of these two candidates."