When Kentuckians think about family values, they think of a husband and a wife raising their children to attend church regularly, being kind and considerate, helping others and teaching them the difference between right and wrong, among other things.
Family values are really the bedrock of our society and have been for hundreds of years. They’re important not only to children trying to be productive members of society, but also for adults to remember those values and adhere to them.
Some do adhere to family values and others don’t, unfortunately.
Greg Stumbo, the former Democratic Kentucky House speaker and now attorney general candidate, is one who didn’t follow commonly accepted family values. But in a recent campaign video that focuses on family values, he tries to make you believe he does.
The video shows Stumbo standing by a church he says he grew up in. He goes on to say, “I learned my family values here and how (to) treat people and care for others. I’ve carried those values with me all my life.”
What Stumbo fails to tell people in the video is that he fathered a child out of wedlock, denied paternity and then fought child support after the mother proved he was the baby’s father.
This doesn’t sound like a man who believes in family values. Stumbo had an affair while still married and as a result of that affair, a child was born. But given Stumbo’s shoddy past, it’s no surprise he didn’t let the voters know about this in his Facebook video.
Stumbo has chosen to hide behind a facade he hopes will appeal to the electorate.
How can he seriously look in the camera while standing next to a church and talk about family values when he knew he had a child out of wedlock and tried to get out of paying child support for his own child?
This is a man who is not driven by family values, but rather by his own personal pursuit of power. He doesn’t care who he hurts along the way to achieve that power. This is a has-been politician who lost his grip on power in 2016 when the Republicans took control of the legislature and is desperate to do or say anything to get elected as the next attorney general, plain and simple.
If Stumbo thinks he is really deserving of becoming attorney general of Kentucky, he needs to tell the voters about having a child out of wedlock and fighting to avoid paying child support. Then he should let the voters decide in November.
State Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, summed up Stumbo’s family value’s veneer very well when he said, “Stumbo’s fronting family values is the definition of chutzpah.”
We couldn’t agree more with Nemes’s assessment of the former speaker from Prestonsburg, because it is spot on.