Less than 24 hours after their victory celebrations, Fletcher and Beshear were at each other's throats on casinos, taxes and ethics. The most newsworthy items:

Beshear says Fletcher should be a leader and get "off the fence" on legalizing gaming.
Fletcher says Beshear is planning to pay for all of his new programs by legalizing casinos which he says is politically impossible to pass.
Beshear says Kentucky could immediately rake in more one billion dollars in casino licensing fees if lawmakers and voters would approve casinos.

Beshear says Fletcher raised taxes, Fletcher says Beshear has a "history of raising taxes", referring to Beshear's years in the legislature.

Fletcher got testy when I pressed him about releasing the names of donors to his legal defense fund and how much they'd given. Fletcher says the real potential for conflicts of interest could be seen in Beshear's income tax returns. The governor challenged his new opponent to release those returns, saying Beshear would have some ground to stand on in demanding release of Fletcher's legal fund donations if Beshear would release his tax returns. Beshear told Mark Flores of WLKY-TV and me that he will not only release his tax returns, but a full accounting of all his assets and liabilities, including partnerships, who's in them, and how much Beshear has invested or owed.
Beshear plans to release that information within the next three weeks but says he doesn't expect the ethically-challenged governor to reveal details of donors to his defense fund and how much they've given. Beshear suspects most of those donors have contracts with state government and Fletcher would be embarrassed by the information. Fletcher says he's not worried that a cloud might be cast over future contracts.

I hope to have about 15 minutes of raw tape of those interviews on our "politics" page on
thursday.