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On the evening of May 23, 1969, your humble columnist graduated from Trinity High School at the Louisville Gardens auditorium, an old armory on Walnut Street (since renamed Muhammed Ali Boulevard).
A few blocks away from that celebration was City Hall, where Louisville’s mayor may have been turning out the lights in his office. The mayor that year was one Kenneth A. “Kenny” Schmied, a Republican.
He had succeeded another Republican mayor, William O. “Bill” Cowger who, prohibited by law from running for a second term, had been elected to represent Louisville in Congress.
More than 52 years after I received that diploma, Louisville hasn’t had another Republican mayor since the end of Schmied’s term. The reasons for this drought are many and varied, but as Kentucky gradually became more Republican over the ensuing decades, Louisville and Jefferson County became more solidly Democratic.