Beech Tree News Network

CORBIN, Ky. – Robert Ooten has a strange way of showing politicians that he likes them.

"When I first saw your commercial, I told my wife, 'That guy's an idiot,' " Ooten told Hal Heiner during a campaign stop at Southeast Apparatus LLC, a small company in Corbin that builds fire trucks and ambulances.

"A successful businessman who's not in politics who wants to get into politics? He's an idiot," Ooten, a shop foreman, told Heiner.

With millions of dollars of his own wealth already spent on television commercials throughout the state (and some adjoining states as well) Heiner, a 63-year-old developer, has done a good job cultivating the image of an outsider.

"I'm from outside Frankfort," he tells people at every stop on the campaign trail.

It's a message well-crafted to show that Heiner is not part of the system that has left Kentucky with an antiquated system of taxation, a government worker pension program that is deeply in the red and a regulatory structure that Republicans are prone to believe is too much of a burden on small businesses.

The fact is that he's more than willing to let voters like Ooten believe he's not a politician despite a successful run as a member of the Louisville Metro Council and a near-successful campaign for mayor that saw him come less than 7,000 votes short of becoming the first Republican leading the city in more than 40 years.

He chose KC Crosbie, a former member of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council, as his running mate.

"I'm an unlikely candidate for governor ... somebody that has not a political organization but has spent their life building a business, to bring new, big ideas into Frankfort," he said.

And that unlikely campaign was humming right along after more than a year on the campaign trail until he got ensnared in the "did he" or "didn't he" debate about domestic violence that threatens the campaign of Jamie Comer, once thought to be Heiner's political rival.

Comer has tried to put a dent in Heiner's squeaky clean image by accusing him and his campaign of being behind allegations that Comer hit a former girlfriend and drove her to a Louisville clinic where she had an abortion.

Comer has denied the allegations, but the woman, Marilyn Thomas, who has contributed $100 to Heiner's campaign, is steadfast.

She said she's never met Heiner and is supporting him only because he's not Comer. "He was the first one in," she said. "If Matt Bevin was the first one in, I might be supporting him."

Meanwhile, Bevin has begun running an ad that has two actors portraying Heiner and Comer engaged in a food fight and says that Bevin will provide "grown up leadership for Kentucky."

Comer and Bevin also have called for Heiner to tell super PACs that have run ads against them to take down the ads, saying they were inaccurate. Comer has even suggested there is illegal coordination between the campaign and Joe Burgan, Heiner's former campaign manager who is associated with both the Bluegrass Action Fund and Citizens for a Sound Government.

In 2005, the company that operated an industrial park at the old Louisville Ordnance Station filed an ethics complaint against Heiner alleging that he had criticized its management in an effort to steer business away from it to his own business parks. That complaint was ultimately dismissed.

Heiner doesn't seem comfortable with this kind of race. The mayoral race was a gentlemanly one in which neither he nor Fischer ran negative ads.

He said that despite that, he has a "core conviction" in him that makes the rough and tumble side of running acceptable. "People, I guess, are entitled to say what they want to say but that's the reason I've been on the road for 60 weeks."

Heiner came to Kentucky 50 years ago when his father brought the family from just outside Cleveland to go to work as an engineer at General Electric. He graduated from Atherton High School and then picked up a bachelor's degree and a master's in engineering from the University of Louisville.

He worked for a while for a company that reclaimed old strip mines in Eastern Kentucky. Ultimately, he went to work for NTS Development and then left there in 1997 to form Capstone Realty, the company that despite claiming Kentucky has a bad business climate, made him rich.

How rich? Heiner won't say, but it's enough that he could sink $1 million of his own money into his mayoral race and at least $4.2 million, so far, into his gubernatorial bid.

His first big development was Commerce Crossings, a business park in southern Jefferson County. He then turned his attention to properties in Southern Indiana. That development has drawn cries of foul from political opponents who claim he is responsible for moving jobs from Kentucky.

In fact, Comer for a very short time, ran a television commercial in Lexington critical of that.

Heiner says he has created more than 4,000 jobs. Critics, however, contend that he has created few jobs and instead has simply created buildings where other people have created jobs.

After a short-lived marriage that failed, Heiner wed Sheila, his high-school sweetheart. They have been married for 35 years and she spends countless hours with him on the campaign trail

Heiner tells folks that he got into public service after his oldest daughter graduated from college and had to move to Texas to find a good-paying job. She got married and had kids.

"Now, she's holding my grandchildren hostage in Texas," Heiner recently told a Rotary club in Corbin.

Louisville Metro Council Member Kelly Downard, a fellow Republican, said that despite sharing party affiliation, the two men disagree philosophically on numerous issues. Downard cares little about social issues, while Heiner wears his religion on his sleeve.

He serves on the board of trustees of Asbury College, a small religious school in Wilmore, Ky., and is former chairman of the Christian Academy of Louisville. A member of Southeast Christian Church, Heiner contributed $20,000 in 2004 to pass the state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Like Bevin, he counts as a friend Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who urged Heiner to get into the race.

"He and I didn't agree on everything, but he is very honest and ethical," Downard said. "He is very smart and very thoughtful and those are things that we haven't seen in a governor in a long, long time."

And he noted that Heiner was willing to change his opinion when facts warranted it. On a citywide smoking ban, Downard said, "He and I both switched from being against it to being for it."

State Sen. Julie Raque Adams, R-Louisville, who sat next to Heiner on the council, said that he was supremely prepared.

"He always did his homework. He was completely prepared for the business at hand … and he was one of the more influential members of our caucus," she said.

He's an advocate for school choice.

Heiner has promised that if elected, he would do away with the kynect health insurance exchange but not before provisions would be made to ensure that people using it do not lose health insurance coverage.

As a prostate cancer survivor, Heiner has said he wouldn't put people at that kind of risk.

He has said job creation is his priority and has called for passage of legislation that would allow people to work in union shops without paying dues or fees to the union.

"There's a sense in Kentucky that we're not competitive for jobs, and we're struggling," he said.

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Reporter Joseph Gerth can be reached at (502) 582-4702. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Gerth.

HAL HEINER

Age: 63

Occupation: Businessman

Political experience: Member of Louisville Metro Council, representing District 19, 2003-2010.

Education: University of Louisville, bachelor's degree, master's of engineering.

Family: Wife, Sheila; four adult children

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By Joseph Gerth
The Courier-Journal
Date: 05-09-2015

Candidate profiles:

This week, The Courier-Journal is profiling each Republican candidate for governor. This is the third in the series.