Democrat ousts Kentucky governor

By Steve Robrahn

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (Reuters) - Kentucky voters on Tuesday dumped scandal-stained Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher, electing Democrat Steve Beshear, while Mississippi Republican Gov. Haley Barbour coasted to re-election.

With all precincts reporting, Beshear, a former state attorney general and lieutenant governor, had 59 percent of the vote to 41 percent for Fletcher, who had trailed badly in pre-election polls following a hiring scandal.

A former U.S. House member, Fletcher easily won four years ago, becoming the first Republican elected governor in Kentucky since 1967.

In Mississippi, Barbour, a former head of the Republican National Committee, had 58 percent of the vote against 42 percent for Democratic candidate John Arthur Eaves, with around 94 percent of the votes counted, according to the Clarion-Ledger newspaper Web site.

Barbour was one of the few politicians to win praise after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 for working to reopen casinos quickly in coastal cities such as Gulfport that were devastated by the storm as a way of kick-starting the local economy.

Tuesday's elections were the last of the year involving governors, and looked likely to leave the landscape unchanged in terms of party breakdowns. Going into the year there were 28 Democratic governors and 22 Republicans.

Last month Republicans took a seat away from Democrats in Louisiana.

The Democratic Governors Association said that outcome would leave its party in control of states with 294 electoral votes in the 2008 presidential election, compared to 244 for the GOP. It takes 270 electoral votes to be elected president.

Electoral votes are the indirect method by which the United States chooses a president. Each state's electoral votes are the sum of its representation in the U.S. Congress -- two for each senator plus the number of House of Representatives seats, based on population. The winner of the popular vote gets the electoral vote in almost all states.

While having a party in control of a governorship in no way assures how that state will vote for president, it does provide party organization and support for the candidate of the party in control.

(Additional reporting by Michael Conlon, Matthew Bigg and Maggie Burks)