The Fancy Farm Picnic is a whir of political messaging. Al Cross writes that it has become less good natured in recent years. A view of the gathering at the St. Jerome Church parish picnic in Graves County, Aug. 3, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

CALVERT CITY — Other speakers at Friday night’s Marshall County Republican dinner were clean-shaven and dressed up. Marty Barrett had a long beard and wore overalls. He stood out. And his message stood out more.

Barrett, who moves dirt for a living and helps govern the county on Kentucky Lake, ambled to the lectern and got right to the point: “The thing I think we need to work on right now is getting caught up in the hatred and the divisiveness between the parties.”

That was a different message than the typical political rhetoric delivered by most of the local and statewide officials at the dinner. It’s held the night before the annual political speaking at the Fancy Farm Picnic in Graves County, where the traditional barbs between the parties have been less good-natured in recent years.

Barrett, the vice chair of the Marshall County GOP, told his constituents that he doesn’t like personal attacks. And, he said in an interview, that includes the type of personal attacks for which former President Donald Trump is noted: “I disagree with that.”

He told the crowd, “Attack the policy, don’t attack the people.”

Interviewed after the dinner, he said, “I don’t like Trump’s personality. I like his policies. … He stretches everything and brags everything up, and my understanding is that in the part of the country he’s from, that’s a normal thing.”

Barrett, 55, owns and runs an excavating and trucking company with four employees, and is a magistrate on the county fiscal court, Kentucky’s version of a county commission.

“People look at us as politicians, but what we are is public servants,” Barrett told his fellow Republicans, who have him polite applause.

The court and the county of 32,000 have gone Republican in recent years, to the point that a plurality of the voters are registered Republicans. Like some other speakers, Barrett noted that, but stuck to his theme.

“I don’t want to forget what it was like being in the minority,” he said, noting that he has many Democratic friends. “It’s new to them, and they don’t know how to take it. … We can still be neighbors.”

Barrett said in the interview that people in both parties cast those in the opposite party as threats or enemies.

“They don’t respect each other. They don’t respect each other’s values; they don’t respect each other’s religion, or lack thereof,” he said. “Just because I disagree with somebody doesn’t mean I don’t respect ‘em, you know. If they’re still providing for their families and doing what they believe is right, then that’s to be admired.”

He said one example of the lack of respect in politics is Republicans’ repeated mispronunciation of Vice President Kamala Harris’s name, with the accent on the second syllable instead of the first, which is how she pronounces it.

Barrett said it’s a way of “making fun of her,” but “I don’t agree with it, I mean, not every time.”

The keynote speaker at the dinner, state Treasurer Mark Metcalf, did not pronounce Harris’s first name correctly any of the five times he said it.

But Metcalf’s largely partisan address did include a compliment for the Obama administration, in particular Leon Panetta, who was its CIA director and then defense secretary. Metcalf, who served in a National Guard logistics unit that worked in removing the last U.S. troops from Iraq, said “Panetta let the Iranians know there would be hell to pay if they shot at our transports.”

The dinner drew about 40 people. Officials said the turnout was low because this year’s picnic is not expected to make much news, and the county’s fall athletic rollout, “Meet the Marshals,” was going on.

This column is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.