Abuse Allegations And Duke Basketball Attacks: KY Gov. Race Heats Up

Republican candidate for governor James Comer and his wife, TJ, speak to reporters in Lexington, Ky., during a news conference on Tuesday, May 5, 2015. Comer denied allegations made by his former college girlfriend t... Republican candidate for governor James Comer and his wife, TJ, speak to reporters in Lexington, Ky., during a news conference on Tuesday, May 5, 2015. Comer denied allegations made by his former college girlfriend that he mentally and physically abused her. Marilyn Thomas made the allegations in a letter to the Courier-Journal in Louisville. (AP Photo/Adam Beam) MORE LESS
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Things are getting rather heated in the Kentucky Republican gubernatorial primary.

It started on Monday when the Louisville Courier-Journal published allegations by a former girlfriend of Kentucky agriculture commissioner and gubernatorial candidate James Comer (pictured), accusing him of physical and mental abuse of her more than two decades ago while they were in college at Western Kentucky University.

The girlfriend, Marilyn Thomas, said in a four-page letter to the newspaper that Comer “was toxic, abusive and caused me a lot of suffering.” The Courier-Journal report did not publish the full letter but quoted passages from it.

“His controlling and aggressive personality alienated me from most of my family and friends at the time,” Thomas wrote in the letter, according to the Courier-Journal. The allegations came about two weeks before the GOP primary. Comer has repeatedly denied Thomas’ allegations since the newspaper report first came out.

Among Thomas’ allegations, she claimed that in 1991 Comer drove her to an abortion clinic to get an abortion and became “enraged” when she listed his name on a form at the clinic. From the Courier-Journal:

“Everything I did, everywhere I went, and everyone with whom I interacted had to be approved” by Comer, Thomas wrote. “Consequences were violent and swift otherwise.”

She said Comer became “enraged” in 1991 after they visited a Louisville abortion clinic and learned that she had used his real name on a form requiring proof that she had an escort to drive her home.

The newspaper interviewed former classmates of Thomas.

“I know she ended up getting pregnant in like October of 1991 and had an abortion in the beginning of November, and I remember him seeing her to the dorm and just dropping her off after they got back from the abortion,” Wendy Curley, Thomas’s roommate, told the Kentucky newspaper

Curley also described seeing bruises on Thomas.

“I would see bruises on her wrists and stuff where she’d say, ‘Oh, I ran into a table,’ ‘I fell,’ just that kind of stuff,” Curley said.

Comer, through lawyer Dick Plymale, “profusely denies” Thomas’ claim. Plymale also said Comer would seek a “devastating lawsuit” against the Courier-Journal for publishing Thomas’ allegations.

“Everyone who knows me understands that the charges are completely incompatible with everything I stand for,” Comer said at a press conference on Tuesday, flanked by his wife Tamara Jo, according to Kentucky’s WLKY.

The accusation dominated the gubernatorial debate on Wednesday. Comer and Matt Bevin, another of the four GOP candidates in the primary and the 2014 tea party challenger to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), accused rival candidate Hal Heiner of playing dirty in the race. Thomas has been a supporter of Heiner. Comer called Heiner “the Christian Laettner of Kentucky politics,” a reference to the Duke basketball star reviled in the Bluegrass State for beating the University of Kentucky with a final second shot in the 1992 NCAA tournament.

Comer was asked twice by moderator Matt Jones about Thomas’ allegations. Comer denied the accusations and added that he hoped Heiner wasn’t behind them.

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