Republican leaders in Kentucky are mourning the loss of former state party chair Bob Gable, who died Friday at the age of 90. Gable chaired the party long before it achieved a super-majority in the General Assembly and held every seat in Congress save one. Scott Jennings is a Republican operative who met Gable in 2000.
“He was a mentor to a lot of us and was a font of historical information. He had ideas, he was strategically very sound all the way through my entire career, and just was really a tremendous sounding board for people who were in the business.”
U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement calling Gable a dear friend and a titanic figure in the Kentucky Republican party. Gable ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1975 and 1995, but Jennings said he always believed Kentucky would become a Republican-leaning state.
“I remember many years working with Bob to scour the state for people who would run for state senate or state house. He was a party builder at a time when the party was really, you know, at square one on trying to figure out how to make gains.”
Jennings said he recalls a 2017 dinner honoring Gable when the Navy hymn was played and Gable, who’d served in the Navy, was up there leading the charge.
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