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Glenda Bradshaw certainly needs some work on her image.
She's a candidate for Jefferson County attorney, a Democrat, facing incumbent Mike O'Connell in the May primary.
When she was last seen making news, she was being escorted out of the Hall of Justice Jan. 5 after she was fired as Director of the Criminal Division, a job that includes oversight of more than 50 attorneys. This, after 31 years of service as a government employee, based on a charge by O'Connell that she wasn't performing her duties.
Bradshaw promptly sued for wrongful termination, seeking $600,000, and then filed to run for office against her former boss.
Last week, she held the first fund-raiser of the campaign, with barely 8 weeks until the election, and says she thinks she needs to raise $125,000 to make the race competitive. She says there are problems with the way O'Connell runs the office and that she plans to change things there.
"A lot of people are very unhappy with the way the office is run," she said in an interview last Friday. "Who is more qualified? Someone with 30 years' experience in the prosecutors office or someone who was a prosecutor 30 years ago for five years."
O'Connell was appointed Jefferson County attorney in 2008 by Jerry Abramson. O'Connell was an assistant county attorney for 7 years, and has been a judge. He was in private practice for 20 years.
He said he's "very confident" about the race and that he's "prepared to spend whatever is necessary to keep the office in the hands of the most qualified person, that would be me."
O'Connell said he's raised well over $200,000 and has dozens of endorsements.
Bradshaw says she'll be attempting to convey a simple campaign message -- that she's for good government and ethics, that she'll put a stop to the political atmosphere in the prosecutors office and the routine requests for political contributions from staff members.
"I believe that it is occurring now," she said.
Of course, outsiders say Bradshaw is simply running as an act of revenge who has no shot at knocking off O'Connell. But while she acknowledges that some might find her a long shot, she says O'Connell has an anger management issue, that he routinely yells and curses at staff members, and that her experience bears that out.
She says she's getting a late start on her campaign because she spent several weeks attending to her father, who was ill in southern Kentucky and passed away Feb. 7. She hasn't hired anyone to help manage her campaign yet, she says, but is getting advice from long-time friends who sympathize with her situation.
She said that O'Connell was angry with her after a story in the Courier-Journal about police officers showing up for court. She feels she had addressed the issue, but O'Connell called her into his office Jan. 5.
"He gave me a two-page letter and had me escorted out," she said. She says she still hasn't been back, and hasn't been able to get personal items (briefcases, certificates, etc.) from the office.
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Rick Redding